Hunter Respeced / Healer Reborn

Hunter Respeced.

I decided to make a survival spec and lose my beloved BM spec for now being it seems to be the #1 DD every where I look and I wanted to put my best foot forward if I did get an invite to the raid from the top guild on my server last night.  (They canceled, not enough showed up)

Running some tests on the dummies in my current gear it went like this.

Survival: 10400
Survival: 10200
Survival: 10200

That is a 5 minute testing with no buffs. except for hawk of course, and no cooldowns.  Female dwarf says it should be 12800 so that means I am doing something wrong.  I can't figure out what it is.  Survival is idiot proof.  That is why I never liked it.  It is even more boring then it was before.

Doing Marksman these where my results.

Marksman: 9900
Marksman: 10100
Marksman: 9800

As you can see my marks spec is not to far behind and in my opinion marks requires more timing and when it's special procs you actually need to do something different and not just do the same thing but sooner like it is with survival.  Based on female dwarf the max I should be doing with MM is 10500.  So I feel I am definitely doing about as well as I can do with it.

So it means I am leaving a lot on the table as SV and leaving basically nothing to spare as MM.  It would make sense being I've been MM for so long and I am good at it but what does not make sense is why I am off in SV by so much.

SV is stupid easy.  Sting, Explosive, BA, CS.  That is basically it with one small addition to it.  If you need to dump focus you use AS if you are out of Lock N Load and you use KC if you are in Lock N Load.  See, that is all you need to know to be SV.  It is a 3 button rotation for the most part if you do not count start up buttons, cooldowns or close procs of LnL. 

If LnL procs close I can find myself focus capped really fast otherwise I will almost never need to use AS or KC if LnL procs with some decent space between it.  I will never be focus starved and I will never be focus capped.  One of my tests I never needed to fire an AS or KC at all over the five minutes and that was the highest test.  The LnL procs just timed themselves perfectly.

Three tests, only one clipped shot, no focus cap ever, and the same basic results for each one.  How is it I get 10400 on a dummy with no buffs and female dwarf says I should be doing 12800.  There is nothing more to it.  I am not missing anything.  I'll do some more dummy tests and see if I can boost it up some.  I was talking on vent at the same time.  Maybe I was a little slow on the draw or maybe I was waiting to long as I have become accustomed to doing as MM because that stupid queue system always locks me into a second Aimed when I hit it for the proc, so I have learned to wait and single cast instead of spamming the 6 over and over waiting for it.

Testing should tell but from what I see so far I think I prefer MM even with its 400 less DPS because of the silence shot, a 3 minute RF and readiness for even more burst during burn phases.  I do not see survival having anything that can come close to those things.

Healer Reborn:

So the days of Cataclysm are upon me as a Disc Priest.  From what I have read it scares me.  Disc seems to be what everyone says is the worst right now.  Even one of the bear tanks in my guild has said he would rather kick a Disc Priest the moment he sees them then to even try because he has yet to see one that could heal anything.  He has however offered to tank for me being it is a guild thing.  I am glad to take the challenge. 

I know Disc Priests are totally broken right now being the shield is basically useless.  The mana it costs to cast it is not really worth it most of the time.  Doing the shield, heal heal thing for rapture is a nice idea but doesn't work as well as intended from my limited experience so far.

I healed two runs with all guild mates.  Normals of course.  I am sitting at 323 item level right now.  Mind you I just hit 85 and that is mostly all quest reward stuff.  One tailoring item and one reputation item.  It won't take me long to be heroic geared but I am not going to make that jump lightly.  When I am comfortable with my mana regen and usage then I will do that.  I will not judge it on some stupid item level.  Item level means nothing in my opinion.

Both runs went smoothly.  Had three 83s and an 82 along with me the 85 priest.  We only wiped once and that was on a mispull by the tank that got 2 packs and one huge mob with no CC set up yet.  He meant to only pick up the big one.  I don't think I could have healed us through that even if I were raid geared.

My only issue was on a few of the harder trash pulls I went almost oom and on most of the boss fights I went oom.  Oddly enough, two of the boss fights I was still at half mana.

I noticed my biggest problem so far is me.  I am casting heals that are not quite required.  I see a DPS get aggro on something and I shield them.  It is a natural reaction I need to stop.  Being I use healbot for display I was also overhealing.  How healbot shows things make it look like the tank is in deep trouble when the tank is only missing 10K health.  I could hold off even healing the tank if all it is is 10K. 

Maybe I should wait for my next shield to be placed for rapture or a renew.  I need to learn how much health is really missing based on that bar that healbot uses.  At the moment it is quite deceiving.  I was throwing heal after heal when I would have been better waiting a few seconds and just casting a greater heal instead with the haste buff from the shield.  That would have made more sense.

Mana management is all in my hands and no one elses.  I need to learn that on my own.  Sure, if I had better DPS in the group the bosses would have went down faster and I would have not been out of mana so soon but I can not always count of having a group of all 10K+ in a heroic and need to learn to heal as if every fight is going to last three minutes even if it isn't.  If I can do that then I will consider myself a good healer.

As it was, I was very happy with my performance over all.  At some points in the instance I even entered LK mode where I started smiting just for something to do.  Some trash packs required no more then a renew to be rolling on the tank.  Even with 4 or 5 mobs on him.  No, this is not over geared people.  This is a level 83 tank tanking a level 83 instance, Stonecore.  It was just that easy.

It helps that it was all guild and everyone there knew the fights beforehand.  I doubt if I do randoms they would go that smoothly but I can hope.  When I can get through the normals with at least 30% mana left and not having used my oh shit buttons during boss fights then I will say I am ready for heroics. 

Of course I can always play the healer game I see a lot of healers in randoms doing now.  They join the group, if the group looks like they overgear the heroic already they stay.  If the group looks like it might actually require work they leave.  With their instant query they are not really losing much time and they are basically getting carried through heroics by a good tank and some awesome DPS.  I just can not see myself doing that.  I consider it wrong. 

But I will tell you one thing for sure.  If I enter a group that does not seriously overgear the content already and the tank charges into a pack of five without saying a word and no CC at all, I am dropping so fast.  As a healer at least I have that option, not like on my Hunter where I have to sit around and endure the abuse or wait for another 45 minutes for another group that might even be worse.

So far however I am not as turned off to healing as I expected to be based on what everyone was saying.  That is a pleasant surprise.