Rejuvenation

…with my Druid nonetheless!

Had a lot of fun this weekend farming heroics using the new LFG tool. I’m actually pleasantly surprised. As someone famous for refusing to pug I was somewhat skeptical of the new tool. Let’s face it, it’s just another means for horrible people to find themselves in groups where they can bitch and moan about how others don’t know how to play.

So Friday night I entered the queue for the first time and it went quite well. On the other hand it was Violet Hold, but it still went really, really fast! After leaving group I logged off to watch Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with my family and went to bed. But after the movie I started thinking about it a lot. My druid has been neglected pretty much since hitting 80. She had a few blues and greens to replace and only a few crafted or purchased epics.

So when I woke up Saturday morning I spent a few hours farming heroics. With the exception of the Pit, they went quite well. Although I have to give kudos to my group that put up with a slightly undergeared healer. We did it, but it took an hour or so. I continued the farming on Sunday for a few hours and roughly 12 hours play time I had gone from a 1700 gear score on WoWHeroes to a 2300 gear score. In fact at one point I was even outgearing my paladin…

My paladin! My main! Now granted my “main” has been my shaman for some time now, but to go from 1700 to my paladin’s gear in less than a day?! That’s freaking awesome*!

But why is it awesome? Is it because gear is fun to get? No. Is it because everyone’s so much more geared so the old heroics are that much easier?  No. And why would someone who avoids pugs like the plague suddenly find fun in this new LFG tool?

Because it’s FREAKING FAST!!!

I finally realized my number one complaint about pugs. Time. You spend 30 minutes to an hour getting a group together or trying to find a group. When you finally do at the first sign of trouble half the group bails and you’re at step one all over again. Never mind the jerks who are quick to blame others. I just wasted a good hour with nothing to show for it. If it were only fun that would be something!

Give me a way to get into a group fast and half the problem of pugging goes away. It’s also nice that if you get screwed with a bad group that random heroics can still get you back in.

So I’ve been rejuvenated. I look forward to gearing up my druid and going back to finish out gearing my priest which hasn’t seen the light of day in months! Heroics have a purpose once again.

*This is no way is an endorsement of what I consider to be the gear problems that continue to plague the game.

Crit By The Healing Meme

OK, all you healers out there are already aware of the healing meme/webring started by Miss Medicina going around. And I got tagged by Christine although she did it via a comment on my blog, and again by Amber. In fact, I got crit by the healing meme as I have four freaking healers!

OK, I’ll be a good a sport. Here’s how it works.

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Since I have one of each class and they are all main spec healers, I’ll just point out here that Kyrileanthos (Paladin) is my main toon, always has been, and always will be. That said, Erdkrieg (Shaman) is my main healing toon right now because we usually have access to at least one paladin healer, or at least other paladins for buffs, and Amber’s effectively recruited EVERY FREAKING PRIEST HEALER on our server and a few other servers as well so Maedchen (Holy Priest, cuz Disc Priests are just fooling themselves) is out. And then Selfreya (Druid) is somewhat undergeared for our current content, although the next time we do Ony25 I may have to beg to bring her along because she’s never going to get geared otherwise. So everyone wants my uberleet chain heals…yeah ok, they’re only interested in me for my heroism. Bastards!

• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

Raids. I rarely run 5-mans anymore because I refuse to grind emblems and I get really bored of content that provides no challenge. I rarely if ever have healed in PvP. Most of you are well aware that I dislike PvP, although I’ll admit to having recently taken my Ret PvP gear in battlegrounds while tank spec’d. That was actually fun at times because I had a hard time dying, even though I couldn’t kill crap!

• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Paladin – Holy Light is just cool, especially when it crits! But honestly I’m a Flash of Light spammer.
Shaman – Chain Heal because I like watching it fly all over the place and attempting to anticipate the best directions to cast it.
Priest – Circle of Healing. I love the group aspect of this heal. Prayer of Mending is fun, but I have a hard time tracking it.
Druid – Tranquility because it has a great animation. (Yeah it’s purty and I’m a guy! Sue me!) All kidding aside, I still haven’t figured out tree healing yet. I use Rejuv the most I think and Nourish too. Nourish is actually pretty cool.>

• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Paladin - I use them all. It used to be Holy Shock because it’s a very ineffecient heal, or was. I think they made it a lot better now and I’ve gotten more comfortable with the insta-cast FoL, because my HS crits a lot! Usually heals in the 7-8k range when it does. I always Beacon, even on trash. I judge. I spam FoL. And I use HL on tanks and emergencies on dps.
Shaman – Healing Wave. I’m rarely on primary tank heals. Although I barely use Lesser Healing Wave either since the mana cost between that and Chain Heal is close enough to make Chain Heal the better choice when more than one person is taking damage, which is often.
Priest – Divine Hymn and Greater Heal, although to be honest I think I have cast Greater Heal at least twice. Not sure I can say that about Divine Hymn.
Druid – Lifebloom has to be a great healing spell, but I haven’t yet figured out how to best decide rolling it vs. letting it bloom. I also don’t have the mana pool to roll it anyway. As I said, I’m still fairly new to tree healing.>

• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Paladin – Tank healing. Beacon the tank taking the least damage. Heal the other one with Holy Light and you have a killer combination.
Shaman – Throughput. Chain Heal can heal for a lot over multiple people. Mana regen is great. I only ever have mana issues when I die and self rez.
Priest (Holy) - Versatility. I think the priest has a fuller arsenal of spells than any other class and can switch roles on the fly if necessary.
Druid – Pre-emptive healing. A druids HoTs are amazing.

• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Paladin – Tanks.
Shaman – Raid. Personally I’m not spec’d for tank healing, though I can still do it fairly effeciently.
Priest (Holy) - Raid.
Druid – Raid.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

Paladin. Ever since the changes in Wrath, Paladins have become more versatile healers in the sense that they have more of an arsenal of things to deal with. When I don’t heal with my paladin after a while, it is somewhat of a struggle to remember how to juggle all the different spells. They may not have the versatility of a priest or the HoTs of a druid, but damn they’re fun!

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Druid. I think this is primarily due to inexperience. The druid to me is a totally different type healer than the others. Even though Holy Priests have HoTs, I still play one as a reactive healer rather than proactive which seems to be pretty much what druids are. And I haven’t even tried Disc Healing which I think I’d find rather foreign too.

• What is your worst habit as a healer?

Getting too comfortable watching the unit frames and not what’s around me. I run with a pretty good bunch of players, regardless of what some people say*, and it becomes very easy to get a little too comfortable that things will be OK regardless of if I’m paying attention. This makes it more difficult when I get back in a progression raid.

• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Someone who calls for heals. I have unit frames. Fancy enough, I can even see my screen. I don’t drink so I’m not squinting at the screen wondering which of the pretty colors are YOUR health bar. Asking me to heal you is like asking you to target hostiles and not the tank (minus any assist macros). And I admit to having let people die because asking for heals got annoying. I will more than likely continue to do so. I have a priority list and unless you’re the tank, who I’ll just yell at to “Shut Up!”, you will end up at the bottom. I will leave you to another healer or your own devices.

I do need to point out my 2nd pet peeve. Range. Get in range. Seriously! Why do I have to tell you?! Can’t you see you’re 60 yards from the nearest healer in the raid?! WTF?!

• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

God I hope not! I seriously hate this attempt to homogenize all the healing classes. What’s the point of having a squishy priest healer if the plate wearing paladin can raid heal just as easily? What’s the point of having a tank healer if say the Holy Priest could tank heal as good as or better than the paladin AND be able to raid heal all at the same time?

I understand the problem a lot of guilds were having because of an excess in one class and lack in others, but to make them all balanced would be asinine. Each class should have something that sets them apart from the others. Keep homogenizing the classes and you may as well just make 3 classes total. Tank, healer, and dps. Don’t even give them special names like Warrior.

• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

Used to use Recount a lot. I will from time to time still look at it, but I rarely evaluate myself on it anymore. The criteria I use is: Did my assignment(s) die and was mana an issue?

• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

Paladin – Either that we can’t raid heal or that we should raid heal. We’re not the best raid healers, but we can still do it. I’ve been in groups where I was the only pally healer with priests, druids, and shamans available and been assigned to raid heal. Think that was an ego trip somewhere, but ok…
Shaman – Can’t tank heal or heal 5-mans. I read a post somewhere this week, or last, where someone was ignored for a 5-man invite because he was a shaman. Sorry, can’t remember who wrote it. Must have had a bad experience, but that’s seriously ignorant.
Priest – Although I’ve never healed Disc, I have run into several people that think Disc sucks because they’re always last on the meters. I’m not even going to comment further other than to say that people who evaluate healers solely on the numbers are bigger idiots than those that spec 100% into a single tree**.  Ironically, it’s those evaluators that usually pick on those that spec that way.
Druid – Can’t tank heal. I’ve seen some pretty good druid tank healers.

• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Trick question. I think healing is fairly easy. It doesn’t take long to figure out which spells to use when. Even druid healing, which is still foreign to me, I’m pretty sure will be easy to learn. The difficult thing to learn is how to pay attention to your surroundings. It’s really easy to look at health bars all day long and never look at where you’re standing.

• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

First, let me state that anyone who attempts to evaluate my performance using Recount is asking for a smack upside the head! The reason why is because I have run into too few people that know how to evaluate a healer using Recount. They look at the numbers and that’s it.

Paladin – Flash of Light spammer, although come to think of it I do use Holy Light a lot more now in Wrath than in BC. Low overheals. High output.
Shaman – High output. Low overheals. Chain Heal spammer to the extreme! We’re talking 65-70%. I know that’s probably bad and a really bad habit, but Healing Wave is rarely required and Lesser Healing Wave is only about 100 mana cost less than CH which will heal more people so… I do use Riptide a lot on the tanks though.
Priest (Holy) – Middle ground output and overheals. Flash Heal and Renew spammer. I’d like to say I spam Circle of Healing, but with the cooldown I just cast it when I can. Low Prayer of Mending. I cannot for the life of me remember to keep this bouncing around and I’ve seen some healers have it as their highest heal!
Druid – Haven’t played enough to see a consistent pattern.

• Haste or Crit and why?

Paladin – Crit. Even with the Illumination nerf, I still get decent mana regen. Besides I get enough haste with Judgements of the Pure.
Shaman – Haste. Faster chain heals. That’s one slow ass spell! And mana isn’t an issue with faster spells.
Priest (Holy) - Haste. Slow heals again. Crit’s for Disc anyway.
Druid – Not sure yet. My gear is a mix of nice epics and crap greens.

• What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Druid. Lack of experience. I’ve healed a few 5-mans and no raids…at least that Amber and I can remember. We questioned it the other day and neither of us could remember.

• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Mouseover macros on all my heals, cleanses, etc.
X-Perl
Quartz
Deadly Boss Mods & Big Wigs

I cannot bring myself to configure Grid and I hated Healbot. I really need to sit down and configure PowerAuras. I’ve never gotten it to work quite the way I want though.

• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

For paladins, I used to stack crit as high as it could go. To be honest, I really don’t care about my stats anymore. If I can get through a fight without experiencing major issues, like running out of mana, then I let the gear fall wherever it may fall. If I notice mana issues, or spell output not being high enough, then I’ll look at stats like spellpower, haste, crit, etc. Otherwise, I feel like I really have better things to do now.

I suppose that’s sort of a lazy place to be and the road to a failplayer, but honestly I’ve lost interest in that aspect of the game due to…let’s call them personal issues and leave it at that. But this isn’t a rant so that stops here.

Consider yourself tagged Mikata!

*Yes, this is becoming a sore spot for me and this is my coward’s way of letting them know because I haven’t figured out how to broach the subject.
**I believe that you can spec however you want. It may not make a whole lot of sense to me, but if it does to you and you’re happy, then more power to you! You may not get invited to a whole lot of raids or instances, but that’s your choice too.

Healing On 4 Classes

Last weekend I spent time leveling my level 17 Hunter, 16 Rogue, and 14 Mage to level 20. Last night I got the level 20 Warrior to level 21, but I got bored…again.

So out comes the DK. I spent some time trying to get into a regular ToC group which finally happened and I got a couple of tank items, including the trinket, and a dps item. No I have no idea what anymore. I forgot to turn Recount back on and asked to see a meter. Given my gear, I think I was at a respectable 2100 dps, even with dc’ing TWICE!!! WTF?! No lag, in fact better than average latency, and two random disconnects! Not even while zoning in or with multiple adds, etc.

It’s not the ISP. My wife has no issues with anything she does and I have no issues with anything other than Warcraft. Even ran a trace again and I got less hops than before with no lag between any of them.

Anyway, after that group disbanded there was a group that had been looking for a healer for some time so I switched over to my druid. As that run started, Amber logs on and requests (or maybe that was demanded ) my assistance in running regular ToC when I’m done. Let me tell you. Healing on my druid is a lazy ass way to heal when the tank is geared like Amber. Not to say that the other tank wasn’t good, but admitting that he wasn’t defense capped and then pulling two groups of adds on the 2nd boss instead of one group made for some exciting times! I’m still not that comfortable healing as a druid.

So what’s healing like with all 4 classes? In a nutshell, weird. Well, it’s weird on the druid anyway.

Paladins are primarily reactive healers. Green bar goes down, cast heal. If it goes down a lot, cast Holy Shock to buy time, then cast Holy Light. Otherwise, you cast Flash of Light…a lot!

Priests, at least for Holy, seems to be a combination of reactive and proactive healing. Health bars go down, cast heals. The advantage of Priesting over Paladining (isn’t it nice to invent words by throwing an ‘-ing’ at the end of them?) is in the range of heals you have. If you want a good versatile healer, I think Holy Priests are awesome!

Shaman. I don’t even know what to say here. I’ve read a lot about how Paladins are considered the spammers of the healing community, but the other night we were in Uld25 and 70% of my heals were Chain Heal. Why? Because the mana cost difference between that and Lesser Healing Wave are relatively the same, or at least close enough. My mana regen with Replenishment is evidently ungodly because I can spam Chain Heal and not worry about mana. I popped my Mana Tide Totem once…because I died and self rezzed. The advantage of Chain Heal obviously being that more people are healed and with the “intelligence” of Chain Heal, it helps in minimizing overheals.

Druids. OK, to be fair I have yet to actually heal a raid yet. But based on my experiences in 5 mans, druids are just odd. If I’m doing it right, then druids are proactive healers throwing their HoTs out before damage is actually done in many cases. No wonder why druids have such massive overheals. After having played the other three classes and being a reactive healer, druid healing is taking a little getting used to. I also haven’t quite figured out whether keeping certain HoTs active are worth it.

Overall my favorite is the Shaman. No, it isn’t because given the right conditions a Shaman can outheal everyone and keep the overheals to a minimum. All classes can do that given the right conditions, except maybe Disc, and heal meters don’t read like damage meters anyway. (Hear that?! Yeah you know who I’m talking to!) And it isn’t because I can be a lazy healer and spam Chain Heal all night long, which some would find really boring, but I really do like seeing the chain jump in all directions across my screen! It’s fun! Besides, I like Riptide. Not sure why. I just do. I know I like massive Chain Heal crits! And even though I hated totems once. Managing them is actually kind of cool.

BoO vs. Yoggie: Round 1

So a week ago I got into a big ol’ fight with the ball & chain. Just kidding. It wasn’t that big of a fight. Kidding. I got in a fight with my loving wife.

Anyway, it happened about 10 minutes before raid time so I had to quickly state that I would be late and they should replace me if necessary. About 25 minutes later I said I gotta go and quickly logged. That night I unfortunately missed out on some continued Ulduar fun. Then on Wednesday when we extended the lockout, I sat out because I didn’t feel it right to make Kotakh sit out when he’d helped us get to Mimiron. So even though I outrank him and he graciously offered to sit out for me, I told him to go instead. And they downed Mimiron and Vezax!

BoO vs. Yoggie: Round 1

So last night was a continued battle to go after dear old Yoggie. And again, I didn’t get us there so I sadly listened in on Vent while they explained the fight and went over some strategy…

YEAH RIGHT!!!

My druid hit 79 over the weekend and tonight was the night I was going to hit 80!!! As for paying attention? I think I heard a few items like avoid the green shit, watch your sanity, kite, portals, run, fail, epic fail, dude what the hell, ok I’m starting to make some of those up, but you get the picture.

So I quite happily and quite contentedly worked on leveling my druid. But then…

BoO: 0 – Yoggie: 1

About 1.5 hours into the raid one of our dps raiders decides he has to go and do homework because he has a quiz tomorrow. Fair enough. Real life before games. Totally understand. Why the hell did you come to the raid to begin with?!

First let me say, I like this guy. He’s a good kid. He’s just a teenager and my priorities are definitely not his priorities. So coming to the raid knowing full well that you can’t stay for the entire raid during PROGRESSION is inconsiderate to say the least. Aside from interrupting the raid while a replacement is found, you’ve now introduced a new person into the raid that doesn’t know what you’ve been going through and is going to hold the raid back while they go through the exact same wipes while the new guy tries to catch up.

Enter The New Guy

Amber starts frantically asking me to come to raid. They need dps and not heals so I figure she’s just whining. Turns out she was serious because Kotakh was switching to Boomkin, so I told her if Josh wants me to come, I’ll come. Evidently he’s the one asking her to ask me anyway.

Remember how I mentioned I wasn’t really paying that much attention earlier? Damn! And I was getting really close to hitting 80 besides!!!

Anyway, they ask for my pally and I zone in, but as I try to teleport I realize I’m saved to Mach’s Saturday run so I ask them if they want the shaman or priest, and shaman wins due to Cleansing Totem and my superior cleansing abilities.

After a quick overview of Phase 1 and 2, I proceed to noob my way through healing. First impressions? Healing Phase 1 is a joke. I spammed Chain Heal the entire time with a few LHWs and Riptides and was still at 95% mana, but we wiped the first few times due to floating green crap and inattentive dps’ers.

By the way, after one wipe Amber eloquently stated that the “The green shit is like baby diarrhea poop. You don’t want anything to do with it!” Man, I wish I could screenshot Vent. Anybody know a free good voice recording program?

Healing Phase 2 is rough as hell because it’s not so much about healing as it is about cleansing. It’s also about trying to figure out how to get into the damn portal which I failed at EVERY SINGLE time!!! First time I was too far away trying to restore a little sanity and got hit with Malady which had me walking in circles, then Apathy had me walking too slow, and then the portal disappeared. The other times were Apathy induced nightmares. Any suggestions on where I should stand next time?

Well as you can imagine frustrations were abundant, but I was having fun. I was seeing something new. Phase 1 seemed really easy as long as people were paying attention to clouds. Phase 2 is a nightmare, but hopefully I can train my eyes to be in 14 places at once. We had one really good attempt into Phase 2, but I think I’m a big part to blame on that one since I failed at getting into portals and cleansing. We did get into Phase 2 several times so all in all it was a pretty good night. Granted I also heard Yogg was nerfed to the ground several times so…

Anyway, a good night in my opinion. Oh and I almost forgot…