Various Observations

Bloated Salmon

It has become my bane.  I need only the Bloated Salmon and Summer Bass for the achievement The Oceanographer achievement.  Summer Bass I have to wait for and that is understandable, it can only be caught in summer.  Makes sense right?  The Bloated Salmon however can be caught year round, or so the rumor goes.  I try a little for it here and there.  So far I am up to 10 hours invested and still no catches for it.  I hate the random number generator.

A Rare Catch

Just from doing the Stormwind fishing daily Thunder Falls I have gotten the One That Didn't Get Away on two of my characters.  One before he was even at 25 fishing skill.  That means they had not even fished up 25 fish yet.  My main character has fished up over 12000 things so far including Turtles All the Way Down, I Smell A Giant Rat, all the coins from the Dalaran fountain, the two raid fishing achievements, hell, you name it and I have fished it up.  I've even fished up blue plate bracers.  Still no rare fish on my main however.  More random number generator hate?

Healer Weapons

Okay, what is the deal with the DPS on healer weapons lately? Scepter of Power has an amazingly huge 31.7 DPS.  That is what my Shaman healer uses.  Now it is all fine and dandy for my Priest healer to have a low DPS weapon, if I need to pass the time while regenning mana I can wand things and wands still have some DPS. 

What about my shaman?  I can melee the mob for 31.7 DPS?  Who had the genius idea to make healer weapons have such low DPS?  I understand there really is no reason for a healer to have a high DPS weapon in a dungeon or raiding, if the healer has to DPS you have bigger issues, but sometimes you just want to lay the smack down on a low level mob while passing by even as a healer.  How embarrassing is it to go melee a 45 mob and it takes you 20 hits to kill it.  Even a healer should be able to one shot low level mobs.

The Worgen Experience

I rolled a baby worgen on the RP server I play on just to see what the starting area is like.  Over all it was a nice story.  I'll do a goblin next on my horde server some day.  I could be wrong, and I most likely am, but it seems as if there is a bug in the quests in the worgen starting area.  I got the achievement for 50 quests completed before I even left there.  Now it might be possible I guess but it sure did not feel as if I did 50 quests before I left the starting area.  Perhaps that is a good thing.  If it did not feel like I did 50 quests and I did, that must mean that it was enjoyable enough to pass the time and not even know that I was questing.  Not bad at all.

Choosing the Worgen

I looked over all the classes a worgen can be to decide what I wanted to make.  At first, before worgens where added, I wanted to make a druid.  Once I considered that I spend most of my time on my druid as a bear I came to the conclusion that being a wolf really made no sense if I would never see the wolf part of it.  So I went with the only true option for any self respecting worgen.  A Rogue.  It just makes the most sense, even more so from a RP perspective.

The Line

I was listening to music when I came up with the idea to make a baby worgen.  It was one line from a Meatloaf song that made me want to make a worgen to RP with.  "Would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?" from You took the words right out of my mouth.  So a male worgen rogue was born.  Get some red roses for an offhand and macro that line to use.  I wonder how many people would understand the reference and know what they are supposed to say back to me.  Should be fun.

Best in Slot

It seems somewhere along the line I forgot my own rules.  Reforging is good.  We love reforging.  I even have a whole post I want to write about the fine art of reforging for maximum effect.  That is why it seems weird that I missed my own best in slot because it had 321 hit rating on it.  I am over cap most of the time, what the hell do I need more hit for.  Sure, the proc rocks on the trinket but I need hit about as much as a horse needs sneakers. I forgot I could reforge stuff.  Duh.  Now to save up for it.  1650 for a trinket makes me want to cry.  Even more so when I wasted my last points on a minor upgrade because I had nothing to buy.

Healing Normals Vs. Heroics

I know that healing is supposed to make us have to choose or spells more effectively now but the difficultly level between normals and heroics is so huge that the training phase for choosing spells in non existing. 

When I first hit 85 and started healing normals it was actually some work.  In a matter of no time I was geared enough that normals where less about choosing spells then blizzard would want it to be.  I could cast just about anything and only on some boss attempts would be ever be a problem.

Now when I run a normal on my Priest I DPS the entire run.  My smite healing can heal the entire group most of the time.  In boss fights maybe a shield and a prayer of mending might be required and in the rare event that a heal is needed I fall back on my expensive fast heal (flash heal) because I need to use penance for offense.  I often am number 3 on DPS if I try and can still pull 2K even when I don't try.  Where is my training for heroics?

Now I get into heroics, same gear that makes normals a laugh fest and I pick and choose my spells.  I use everything I can to regen mana.  I do not use my expensive fast heal unless it is a life of death situation and I still run out of mana on nearly every pull.  Boss fights?  Forget about it.  Unless I have a super DPS crew where everyone is doing over 12K you might as well just assume that I will be oom 50% into the fight.

Learning curve anyone?  How can you be 100% mana for an entire run on normal even while DPSing while healing and be oom on one trash pull in a heroic?  I think there needs to be some tinkering with the numbers.

Mana Regen

A few leveling characters in my guild wanted to do a run so I figured I would help out and heal for them.  I pop on my shammy and they invite me to group.  They say they will be back in a minute to queue up and I just hang out doing what healers do when they have nothing to do.  I heal myself over and over.

I do my standard routine for heals.  Riptide and Healing Wave.  1 and 3, 1 and 3, 1 and 3.  While waiting for them that is all I do over and over.  11 minutes later they come back.  11 minutes of non stop healing and I am still at 100% mana.  Awesome.  Now if only those things actually healed enough to keep a tank up that would be nice.

If I did greater healing wave, which does not really do a huge amount more then healing wave, I would be oom in no time.  God forbid I tried healing surge.  I would be oom before I could cast 7 of them.  Balance anyone?  Apparently that word is not in blizzards vocabulary.

Hunter PvP

The patch is coming Tuesday most likely and the big fix for hunters in PvP is supposed to be that hunters will now be able to auto shoot while moving.  Dear god no.  Please say they remove this.  I beg of you blizzard.

First off, auto shot hits like a wet noodle.  It will not be the fix for PvP we need.  Try actually adding a fix and then we can talk.  Secondly, the targeting issues hunters have now are enough to make a person scream.  Good hunters are not pulling the next pack when the system auto targets something else after a mob dies because they are smart enough to move and click off the mob.  Bad hunters, or hunters that are not quick enough in reaction, are pulling more mobs left and right because of the broken system.  Now with auto shot always going it is no longer a case of the good hunter moving to stop his shot.  His auto shot will still go off while moving so instead of the way it is now where the auto will not start again until the cobra/steady ends on switch, so you move to stop it, it will go instantly because the move does not break it.  You bastards.  You are trying to turn hunters into huntards.

Fix that auto targeting thing first.  Fix the tab targeting thing first.  Then we can talk about auto shot while moving.  And for those that do not know, even if you do not have auto target selected in your setting it still does it.

I've gotten into the habit of always being at maximum range so even when I do auto target another mob the other target is out of my range so the shot does not fire.  Doing that will become 100% more important with auto shot going crazy all the time now.

Minimum Range

The idea is old, remove it.  There you go, you just fixed Hunters for PvP.  How hard was that?  Not to mention the number of fights in this expansion that are so filled with Hunter hate because of minimum range.  I've stopped trying to even get the wind at my back against the dragon in VP.  Not worth the effort with him having such a huge hit box.  Sure, I can easily get the wind at my back... and melee him.  That is just one of many fights that really suck for Hunters now.  Just remove minimum range and it fixes PvP and does not hinder Hunters in a way that no other class has to deal with any more.

Life Grip

Also known as Leap of Faith.  I have a guild mate that hates it.  Refuses to use it.  So be it.  He is the one that will end up subject to wipes because he refuses to use all the tools at his disposal.  I used to twice this weekend to save a wipe and saw it used on another person to save their butt once this weekend.

The tank got stuck in BRC and could not get the boss from the center.  The AoE was going to kill us.  I made the split second decision to either try and heal through it or force the boss from the center.  I life gripped the tank to me and now that he was so far away the boss moved from the center and I was able to heal everyone up and the boss died shortly after.  Sure, it was partly the tanks fault for not moving him out enough.  He was doing little steps and that was not enough.  I just did not want a repair bill for no reason.

Second time in BRC and another tank mistake.  They did not realize that the boss was not taking damage any more.  The debuff had fallen off.  I was on the other side of the fire.  I gripped the tank through the fire, the boss followed, was dead as soon as it entered the fire.  It only had 50K life left to start with.

Another time on the last boss of VP a shaman was lagging and could not get into the triangle.  The healer dragged their ass there.  Another life saved by life grip.

Life Grip... not just for saving stupid DPS any more.

Paladin Healers

Paladins seem to be the only healing class not dying from mana starvation every time they turn around.  Don't worry, blizzard is going to fix that.  They are raising the mana costs of paladin spells.  Come on now.  How about lowering the costs of the other healers spells instead of raising the cost of the paladin ones?  Did someone in the blizzard offices notice it and say, oops, we forgot to break paladins and then the boss yelled out, break them now, we can't have people actually enjoying healing without worrying about mana every second of every fight.

Tab Targeting

Have you ever brutally wiped in a normal?  I mean wiping to the point where you did not stand a chance?  I wiped in VP, on trash, when I was tanking and even if I was fully raid geared and everyone in my group was fully raid geared, we would have never survive the pull.

It was the pull before the dragon guy.  I bring the mobs down marked.  Get my threat lead on the skull and start to tab along to get a few hits on the others.  Either me or someone else in the group, we do not know for sure, seemed to have tabbed to the boss up on the top.  Yes, the one all the way up there.  We aggro the boss.  The boss does not like people that are not on his platform.  He one shots everyone.  Took him two shots for me.  Either way, we wiped brutally because of the stupid tab targeting.  It was quite funny however.

Hard Mode Normals

There is a boss in normals that is harder then on heroics.  Or at least you can make it that way.  Take a marginally geared group, one good enough to blow through normals with no CC and limited healing needed but not quite heroic geared, or even close to heroic geared at best.

Now get into BRC.  Pull all the pups before Beauty and then grab runty from around back.  Kill runty and then let the fun begin.

500% increased damage.  150% attack speed increase.  150% movement speed increase.  Immune to taunts.

Holy crap Beauty does not like people that kill runty.  We attempted it for fun.  We died over and over.  Even tried it with two tanks and three healers.  Still wiped.  I could take three hits before I died which was workable but when beauty charges someone it can kill them or come close to killing them.  And if I happen to lose my treat lead then whoever gets beauty's attention is dead.  One shot dead.  Not even a prayer of survival.  I can't taunt back. 

You pass me on aggro, you die. I am going to bring new people I am training into here to teach them to watch their threat once I gear up enough to take a little bit more then 3 shots from beauty.  It would be a perfect teaching tool for new raiders that have issues watching their threat.