Sever is Still Moving Slow

I was invited to TofFWs run last night.  It was set up with hand picked people from all over the server with alternates.  Not sure if I was an alternate or a main but I was one of the ones invited and oddly enough, with as OP as Survival is now, I was also the only Hunter invited.

Of course I accepted.  I am dying to raid, I hate sitting around doing nothing.  Seems I was one of few that accepted.  Only 6 people over all accepted and there were a few tentative so the raid never took off.

That is the story of my server lately.  Nothing going on.  So I continue to work on my characters just for something to do. 

Reached 45 exalted reputation by getting my Hunter exalted with the Wardens yesterday.  That is even with taking a week off from doing dailies because I was already bored to sin of them.  Was easy to get that one maxed.

I also reached 1000 Valor Points yesterday.  That took a lot longer then it should have.  I was ready to start running heroics on day one.  Only recently has it become possible to finish them on a near daily basis.  I entered the queue when I started my TB dailies and it pooped shortly after I was done.  Dungeon was already in progress which is never a good thing right?  I entered and was in the middle of a boss fight, the only one there, I was two shot before I even had a chance to move.  Oh well.

Over all that was the only bad thing about it.  The run went super smooth.  One good thing about joining a dungeon in progress, it is shorter.  They still need to fix the amount of time these things take.  Dungeons are too long time wise.  They are there as an extended five person daily quests just to get points for gear.  At least that is how I see it.  I think of it as a quest.  Quests should not take 2 hour or even 1 hour or even 30 minutes in my opinion.  30 minutes I can deal with however and being I joined this dungeon in progress that is all it was.

A 30 minute heroic with no wipes, now that is something I can live with.  I pulled 19K on one of the bosses.  That is a new high for me.  I am getting more and more comfortable with focus and survival, while overpowered right now, is so amazingly easy that you could be in all quest greens and still pull 10K I think.  I feel dirty every time I play now, it is like I am cheating.  Survival is like having my own personal I Win Button.

I can't wait until they fix Hunters in PvP however.  I want to get back to doing arena and right now Hunters are completely useless, at least as I know how to play them, in an arena environment. 

Hunters can still be pretty damn useful in battlegrounds however if the people around you realize that you are no longer the burn character, you are now the control character.  In MM I can pretty much lock someone down nicely for a while.  Honestly, while that can be fun, I like the old days of being the big gun that can burn anyone down, no flag runner ever made it past me.  One concussive and that was long enough to keep you in range to toast you even with a healer on your the whole time.  I want that type of hunter play back.

I healed a guild run on my Priest yesterday, sitting at 328 item level still (even if the system tells me 329).  I tanked a guild run on my Druid yesterday as well.  Have no clue what the item level on that char is however.  I got a healing drop, which is nice being I want to work on my healing offspec for my druid.

I think item level is a little bit on the useless side for judging if you are ready for heroics.  First off, my Priest's item level is higher when I have my craftables in my bag.  Why should things I crafted to auction off be considered part of my gear?  Why should my PvP gear be considered part of my gear?  The web site shows equipped item level and total item level as two different things.  Why does the dungeon finder not use the same criteria to judge?

On my Priest I have set a marker for a number I will look for before I consider heroics.  2000 Spirit.  Once I am at 2000 spirit then I know I will not be running oom every time I turn around.  That should be a solid starting number to make heroics a bit more bearable.

From what I have been reading it seems like most priests seem to have the 2200-2300 as the magic number for when heroics become easier.  While easy is nice I just want to be comfortable.  I want to learn to manage mana, that is fine.  I do not want to go oom on every single pull.  2000 should help with that.  Give me enough to not have to worry about trash and still not give me too much to make bosses no brainers.  So I can still work on learning mana conservation on them.

When I headed last night I was letting people sit with missing a little health.  Do you know how hard that is?  I was getting itchy trigger fingers wanting to click something to heal them.  Anything, even a shield.  Someone is missing a sliver of health... I... must... do... something. 

God it is hard to not heal someone.  I managed to get through it and to my surprise most of the people I ignored healing where back at full health on their own before we made it to the next mob.  What a relief.  I did not keep everyone at max and the world did not end.

I noticed, from not healing the small stuff at all, that my mana was going much further.  I always had the extra mana to use my expensive quick heal on the tank should it be needed.  Having that option, to use the expensive quick heal, has really taken the pressure off of me while healing and that has helped me not over heal out of fear of losing the tank knowing all my heals take forever to come off it seems.  I think I am really starting to get a feel for the new world of healing and over all it is not that bad.

I am a little over 1600 spirit now and it seems that on many trash packs in normals, if appropriate CC is used, I am ending every battle with a decent amount of mana and on occasion even close to full mana.  That is a good sign that I am getting closer to being able to do heroics as well.  It also helps that I am running with guild mates.  Not sure I would have the same success in normals with a pug but I am almost to the point where I am willing to try it.

To me, that will be the real proof if I am ready to make a step forward.  Anyone can heal with a group of people that know how to CC, know how to avoid the bad, know how and where to tank the mobs.  To do healing in a random with the chance of getting a group with four complete morons and still do good, now that is the sign of a good healer.  Maybe another week and I might be ready to try that just to test myself.

As far as tanking on my druid.  Tanking was tanking.  Ask for CC, get everything else mad at you.  Let them beat on you while everyone kills them.  Move on.  Tanking is as easy as it gets in this game.  Again, with guild members that know what they are doing at least.  I will still never tank a random.  Ever.  Just not happening.  Way to many stupid people out there to risk it. 

While tanking might be the easiest job in a heroic from a standpoint of execution it is the hardest job when it comes to accountability.  Anything goes wrong, it is the tank fault when in fact it is more often the DPS that did something wrong and the tank was just not good enough to cover for them.  Sure, I have seen my fair share of complete failure tanks out there but good DPS (or healers) can make up for a bad tank sometimes as they have the correct spec and gear.  My Hunter and my Priest have carried more bad tanks then you could even count.

The main reason there is such a lack of tanks in this game is that there are way to many bad DPS characters out there.  Ones that do not follow kill order, ones that do not watch threat, ones that like to pull more mobs for you, etc.  If you get competent DPS then tanking is all about smacking around the big baddie and letting everyone do their thing.  Like me for example.  I do not tank randoms because random people are undependable.  You never know what you will end up with and it is not worth it. 

I am sure many tanks are like that.  They will just ask in guild.  I'm going to tank my random, who wants in? and instantly you have a guild group.  No need to take risks.  And even with lesser guild members that do not know fights, you can be on vent with them to yell, watch your aggro.  Step out of the void zone.  Trap the square.  Once you do your random, there is no need for you to run again that day so that is one tank out of the pool of available tanks.  This is also the reason why in randoms you normally get horrible tanks.  If their own guild does not want to run with them, they must be bad.

Speaking of tanks.  I really need to get back to my warrior.  Last I was on he was sitting at 72 and enjoying northrend.  I can probably knock out up to 80 in a matter of 2 days if I want to and then just let him sit and get full on rested. 

I am so sickeningly bored of this horrible Cataclysm content that going back might be a nice change of pace. Not to mention I have the heirloom cloaks now as well to make things quicker.  Go back to a time where all questing wasn't boring and follow one quest line type of questing.  Go back to areas that where designed to look good, not look cluttered.  I think it would be a nice change of pace.

At least it would give me something to do while I wait for my server to catch up so some raids actually start to get done once in a while.  It is sad when friends tell me their servers are bored because all raids have been done by most of the server already and not even one guild on my server has finished one raid.  Sad, isn't it?