Monday Random Thoughts

It's that time again to throw together a whole bunch of... stuff.

- I did a lot of bouncing around on a few characters this weekend and noticed some interesting trends in my characters no matter what role they fill.

- The 2 key seems to be where I put my go to spell on all my characters.

- Chimera Shot on my Hunter, Penance on my Priest, Shield Slam on my Warrior, Mutilate on my Rogue, Arcane Blast on my Mage, you get the idea.

- I swear I did not set that up on purpose.

- Then again, I do tend to put things in what I consider to be logical places so that mean I put them there on purpose I guess.

- Speaking of bindings.  I really need to bind some things I had not had bound because I did not run that character in group play often.

- Lets be honest here.  When playing solo binding are not really needed on utility things.  Heck, they probably are not needed on anything.

- So when I started to play my mage I figured, let me bind poly.

- One thing about binding stuff.  You also have to remember where the hell you bound it.

- Why the hell is that mob not turning into a sheep? Click, click, click.  Oh, I did not bind it to that key.  That makes sense.  Oops.

- After a few really slow to the draw sheepings I got the hang of it.  Throne of Tides needs CC in randoms.

- I've said it before and will say it again, any time you can remove a step in game play you are doing yourself a favor binding it.

- Even if you only use poly once every 10 dungeons targeting mob and hitting a key is 100 times faster then targeting a mob and then moving your mouse to the bar to click it.

- Trust me.  The first three pulls I did that.

- It made me feel... dirty.

- Keybinding is not just for you, it is for everyone else around you.

- Enough preaching about keybinding and more thoughts about figuring out my mage.

- How the hell do people pull 15K DPS in all greens as a mage?

- I do the whole burn, conserve, burn thing and started my weekend at 10K max on non gimmick bosses.

- I ended my weekend with considerably better gear and still only do 12K.

- Had a random with a similarly geared mage when I was healing.  He pulled 23K DPS on the same boss I topped out at 14K at.

- How the hell do I mess up pressing the 2 button?

- I know there is a lot more to it then that.  Maybe I am just not lucky with my 2 button.

- Based on my current gear on my hunter with every possible raid buff, debuff, food and flasks I should be able to reach 25600 DPS.

- I've only did that once.  I did 26200 once and that was without all the perfect buffs, no food, no flask.

- Must have got lucky with crits.

- To only happen once it had to be luck.

- Maybe it would happen more if my Chimera shot was not 2.

- I really think I need to rethink everything being 2.

- Seriously.  I am perplexed at how my mage is pulling such crap DPS.

- Took some time out to read some guides online and check up on things at EJ.  I am doing everything to the letter and nothing.

- I should be getting an extra 10% damage boost just for being a gnome.

- Lets face it, gnome mages rock.

- I got the balloon for my mage and he carries it everywhere he goes now.

- It looks perfect on a gnome.

- How come it disappears when you mount?

- Speaking of pets, my priest was in a dungeon yesterday and I always have my giant sewer rat out. Someone gave it a pet biscuit and hot dam that is one giant giant sewer rat.

- It was the biggest thing in the dungeon.

- Almost as big as the mammoth that follows my warlock around.

- Check that, almost as big as the mammoth that used to follow my warlock around.

- I popped on to my lock for the first time in a couple of weeks and did a few quests for fun and my mammoth was no where to be found.

- Looks like blizzard fixed it and killed off my mammoth.

- Lets all have a moment of silence for the loss of my mammoth.

- He will be missed.

- Was he a he or was he a she?

- How do you tell on mammoths in video games?

- Now to my priest who I can tell is obviously female.

- Do you know how I can tell she is female even without looking?

- Because she has the most horrible jokes in the game.

- Guess that also proves she is a human female.

- Seriously, does anyone think human female jokes are funny.

- Do you know what the best female human joke is?

- Their dance, now that is a joke.

- I figured it was time to relearn how to play my priest.  I needed something to do and having another geared healer can not be a bad thing right?

- There was a guild member just learning to tank so I figure it would be a good time to bang out some randoms.  He and I teamed up and off we went.

-  Oh, the horror.

- A tank that never really tanked before and a healer that has not felt comfortable healing since wrath.  This was not going to go well if we got three DPS that sucked.

- We got three DPS that sucked.

- My biggest mistake is that I kept hitting prayer of healing instead of flash heal when I went to cast one of those oh shit the DPS think they are a tank heals.

- It seems like all melee DPS like to tank.

- Why don't they just roll tanks if they love to take aggro and have the mobs on them?

- This is a case of bad DPS.  Part of your job as a DPS is to manage your threat.

- If you keep pulling off the tank, you suck.

- Sure, the tank might suck too but you have to work within the tanks limits.

- The runs where we had players I might normally say sucked if I looked at DPS only where fantastic.  They did not grab aggro from the tank.  They hit the skull first.  They assisted the tank whenever able.  If they got aggro they ran to the tank or stopped attacking.  They just did 6K DPS.

- Who would have thought I would be saying right now that the runs I had with all 9K or less DPS players where better groups then the ones with people doing 15K.

- With a learning tank it is better to have lower DPS.  Less chance of grabbing aggro.

- When two melee and the tank where all taking huge damage spikes there was nothing I could do.

- I am just not that comfortable on my priest yet.

- I don't think I could ever get that comfortable on my priest.

- I don't think it is really a factor of skill and comfort.

- 50K per second on a tank I can manage because you know sooner or later they will avoid one and I will play catch up healing. 50K per second on three targets, two that do not have an mitigation, I can not handle.  Don't think any healer can.

- I started to just let the leading aggro getter die.  After two tries to save them and losing the tank in the process I figured it was not worth saving them.

- Those wipes where my fault completely. 

- I was in error in trying to heal the DPS.  If I had not tried to heal the DPS I would have never lost the tank.  So as much as it was the fault of the DPS for pulling aggro, I could have fixed the problem by not trying to save them and just keeping the tank up.

- I adjusted, I stopped healing them in situations like that.

- They did not adjust.  They kept dying.

- Do people ever learn?

- I noticed my mana seems to last a lot longer on my priest.

- Maybe that is because it seems like it take a year and a day to cast a heal.

- It might not be lasting longer, it just takes me longer to use it because all the casts are so dreadfully slow.

- I want all heals to be 2 second or less cast times.

- Now that would be comfortable.

- What is the worst feeling for you as a healer?

- For me it is seeing a DPS start to take damage. 

- The second you see the DPS starting to get hit you throw a shield on and then start putting your big heal on them and before it is even done casting they went from 100-0.

- I really miss the days when a shield would actually, you know, do something.

- At least our big heals are now actually big heals.

- While tanking a random I had a paladin healer throw a 112K heal on me.

- Now that is awesome.

- But I can imagine seeing the overhealing now on meters with heals like that.

- Overhealing is not going to mean as much as it used to when considering things any more.

- Say I needed 60K, it makes sense to hit me with your big heal.  You get a 112K crit and now have 52K over heals on one heal.

- Looks bad on the meters. 

- You can say, why didn't you use a smaller heal.  But you can not take a crit for granted.  If you throw a smaller heal out and it only heals for 15K instead of 30K you are now behind the eight ball and the tank can fall dreadfully low and maybe even die.

- You are better over healing the 52K from a crit then underhealing the tank and losing them because you where afraid to over heal.

- The whole over healing thing can now be thrown out the window for the most part now with 200% crits.

- My priest is still not really geared so her crit heals are only around 60K.

- More then ample for a heroic.

- As long as I don't have to heal three tanks at the same time in a heroic.

- By the end of the weekend I was feeling a lot more comfortable again healing.

- To the point where I am back to spending my time jumping around and dancing while healing because I am not afriad of everything any more.  I know what I need to do and when I need to do it.

- Stella got her grove back.

- Now if only I could stop hitting prayer of healing by accident.  I swear it is a mental block.  I can not get it out of my system.  I am almost tempted to move flash heal back to its old place and say I lost the battle of learning new bindings.

- But I will not give up.  I'll get used to it even if a few DPS have to die because of me learning.

- My feelings as a healer have changed this expansion.

- I used to think anyone that died was my fault.

- Now I think anyone that dies, it is their fault for making me choose between them and the tank.

- One pull I played tank on.  While healing.

- The four dragons before the last boss in GB.  Ice trapped one.  Pulled three.  DK DPS and my friend the newbie port pally die because they are both playing tank.  Oops, my bad.

- Don't worry, I will tank it, my feminine priest in all her girly girl glory says flexing her healing muscles.

- Not like I had a choice in the matter, when they died the mobs came straight for me.  One was dead but two where still up and the third was still trapped.

- I spammed heals on myself like crazy.

- They kept me in their sights and the hunter and mage burned them down.

- I held aggro the whole time spam healing myself.

- Go go priest tanking.

- Oh yeah, that grove is back.

- My mana seems to last so much longer on my priest.

- That is odd being the last I played her this expansion I was oom after casting 4 or 5 heals.  Seems they fixed that since I played her.

- One day of randoms, 8 in total, 351 item level now.

- Have to love 359 JP gear for gearing up alts.

- One more weekend like that and I will be up to at least 357 which is firelands ready.

- Not bad for a character I basically abandoned 2 weeks into the expansion in one days work.

- Being she is my original PvP character I might actually get back into PvP with her.

- People are always looking for disc heals for PvP.

- I wonder why, shields suck now.

- As a healer I will easily be able to max out JP and convert to honor for 371 gear.  I might have to consider that.

- Only have three 333 pieces to replace on her now.

- At least I replaced my 318 wand with the one from the second boss in GB.

- I thought I would never replace that.

- Speaking of PvP, how come on my server the only time I ever see people advertising for rated battle grounds in about 30 minutes before I am heading off?

- Seriously, I would love to get into them but every day of the week there are people spamming to do them just as I am logging off.

- Did the server change time zones on me and I had not noticed it?

- Even raids, always looking for people to pug stuff as I am logging off.

- How did the times that  people runs things change on my server so quickly?

- Even if I could go I am always one step behind.

- Two weeks ago it was /2 LF more RBG 2500 resilience required.

- I had 2200.

- I hit 2500 resilience and it became /2 LF more RBG 2800 resilience required.

- I swear someone up there hates me.

- I hit 2800 resilience and it became 2/ LF more RBG 3K resilience required.

- I finally hit 3K and start looking for some runs and guess what?

- /2 LF more RBG 3.3K resilience required and don't suck.

- Oh well, not even worth getting to 3.3K resilience now because I suck.

- I suck because I could not get into any because I was always behind the curve.

- I'd suck a lot less if there were still some /2 LF 2500 people out there.

- It seems like my whole server moves at once pace and that pace is always three days ahead of me when it comes to PvP.  I am always three days behind.

- Wish there were some RBGs going on around 7 PM or 8 P M instead of 10 PM or 11 PM.

- Perhaps it is a summer thing. 

- When the kiddies need to go to bed at a reasonable hour again they will not be doing stuff so late at night any more.

- All in all, it is a good thing for me, I hate playing with the kiddies either way.  Most of them seem to be lacking in social graces.

- Did some arena and got slaughtered this weekend too.

- It was horrible, there was blood and gore everywhere, most belonged to the priest in our group.

- 10 matches, 2 wins.

- Not bad considering I am not very good and the priest was brand spanking new to PvP.

- At least it was fun.

- Dying isn't a big deal, as long as you have fun doing it.

- You do not need to be great at the game to have fun with it.  The priest sucked, he knew it, he admitted it, he had a great time and so did we.

- He will get better.  Sometimes people just need a place to learn.

- Wish more people remembered that they where new once too.

- For some people like that priest, it makes their game leaps and bounds more fun being included and given a chance to learn.

- I guess that was my good dead for the week.

- Now it is your turn to go out and do a good dead.

- Have a great day.