I Healed My First Warlords Challenge Mode, and I Liked It

Last expansion I did all the challenge modes on my hunter and I helped other people by either tanking or healing for them on other classes, even if I never completed all of them on either a tank or a healer.  This expansion my hunter was my only character I had any challenge mode experience on.  Until last night.

In a spur of the moment sort of thing someone in guild wanted to know if anyone was up for challenge modes.  Of course I was.  I am always up for things like that.  So when all the people that wanted to go raised their proverbial hands we had one tank and four damage dealers.

Of the four damage dealers I was the only one that had any real healing experience so even if I wanted to go on my hunter I offered to heal.  I did warn them I had not healed a single challenge mode this expansion and I am very out of practice when it comes to healing having healed so rarely this expansion at all.  But I would be willing to give it a try.

So we headed to the dungeon of choice, iron docks, as the leader of the group, the only one there with any real challenge mode experience, said that would be the easiest one being we had two complete rookies on DPS and me as a rookie healer.

The group make up was a tank and healer, of course, with one melee and two ranged.  Quite honestly I hate healing melee in a "challenge" type setting because they take more damage no matter how good they are or how hard they try.  It is just the nature of the beast.  But I was ready to give it the old college try, so to speak.

We finished the dungeon missing gold by 4 minutes and 19 seconds.  Boo.  But we could have done gold, really we could have.  We had one wipe on trash where just a little too much was pulled.  It was early on, we should have reset, but at that point I did not know if I would be capable of healing this so we were still in the "testing" phase.  We had to lose about 3 minutes, if I were to guess, due to that wipe.

So if you wanted to look at it that way we missed gold by one minute and 19 seconds and missing gold became 100% my fault.  While the over pull could have been avoided, I could have healed better and kept us from wiping.  But the real issue was I did not bring enough food.  Toward the end of the dungeon we waited a few seconds here and there for me to naturally regenerate some mana.  Easily we lost close to 2 minutes to that happening.  Not to mention the two players that died during the run which I needed to spend time reviving and they spent time eating and rebuffing.

So yes, we really honestly could have done gold.  In hindsight I did not need as much mana as I waited for.  I never was less than 50%, I was just worried as I did not know how I would handle things so I wanted to be at 100% whenever I had the chance to get back up.  I had absolutely zero confidence in my skills.  Even if it seemed as if the group was confident in me.

I would not be surprised if we had come close to realm best time if we had not wiped and I had bought mana food and I did not lose two people I had to revive along the way.  My realm does not have great realm first times mind you.  I think the next time we are there we could easily cut 10 minutes off the time we did it on.  Or at least 5 without that wipe and those 2 deaths along with my waiting on mana, that is for certain.  We can do an 18 minute run, no doubt.

I really loved the idea that my gear did not matter at all.  It was scaled down.  So the fact I did not have my tier set meant nothing.  The fact that I had a couple of 670 pieces on meant nothing.  It was all about spell selection and the skill of movement, reaction and planning.  I like that it pressed me to do better than I thought I could do being out of practice on a healer.  I am extremely happy with silver on my first attempt.  I think that is probably the best anyone could wish for when you were in the group I was in with two people that had never stepped into a challenge mode, one person that had not healed one, and the other two that had only done as high as silver before.

The melee would go from full to 10% it seemed every few pulls, if not every single one of them.  But he never died, and he also worked on protecting himself.  When he got low like that he stepped off for a second and let me get the heals he needed on him instead of pushing it and possibly dying.  I say it was very smart play on his part.  He could have stayed in the fight and lasted another 3 or 4 seconds an died, or he could have stepped back, let me heal him and lose those 3 or 4 second but be alive for the next 20 seconds it took to finish the mobs.  He made the right choice, lose 4 seconds of DPS up time to gain 20 seconds and not was 10 seconds afterward to revive them.  That was the right choice.

One of the range was a nightmare and I think replacing him and adding another, more raid aware, damage dealer would have really helped.  I was forced to heal him as if he were a tank.  He was always standing in something.  He was always getting hit by every avoidable mechanic, he was wildly pulling more packs and I think he was even the one that was responsible for the over pull early in the run.

Removing him and getting a better damage dealer in that slot would have done wonders.  I would have probably never lost the two people I lost during the run because one person was just taking so much damage demanding my attention to be split nearly 100% of the time.  I would have not needed to spend as much mana on the expensive fast heals because I would be able to keep up with the less expensive ones if I was not forced to spam people with heals to keep them alive in situations when they really should not have been taking any damage to begin with.  Speaking of mana, I would not have needed to worry about mana if I were not having so much more to heal.  All that avoidable damage wastes mana that should never need to be spent. I honestly believe if that one ranged was as good at avoiding stuff as the other was, meaning they only needed minimal upkeep, I could have kept both the tank and the melee up just fine without ever needing mana the entire run.  I am sure of that.

Over all I was proud of how well I did.  Of how well the whole group did, yes even the one standing in junk, because we still made silver with tons of time to spare.  When it was over I did not think "cool I helped the guild out", even if I did think that as well, but I thought "I had fun healing this, maybe I should make a challenge mode set, this was fun".

I actually want to heal some more challenge modes now.  I was to spam some dungeons and try to collect best in slot challenge mode gear.  I want to see how far I can push it.  I want to see if I can be a challenge mode gold healer.  Unlike last expansion when you could actually over gear challenge modes with gems and such (and I did like that in all honesty) this time around there is none of that.  You are really testing your ability and your ability only.  Well, yours and the ability of your group too of course.

I am sure in a poor group I would have not had fun.  I am sure if there was a wipe fest I would have not had fun.  I am sure that having a tank that knew his class and could help himself which allowed me to help others made it a fun run.  So I am not sure I would do these in random groups.  But I would gladly heal again for guild and not just to help the guild out, but because I kind of liked it.  As long as I have a solid tank to heal behind at least.

Picking an Off Spec

For a few of my characters, most glaringly priests and warriors, I am going to have to decide on an offspec.  With mists coming soon and there no longer being any reason to have two of the same specs I need to start deciding what I want to do with my offspecs.

Throughout my game play career I've always been a tank on all my warriors and a disc healer on all my priests.  My offspecs for those classes where tank and disc as well.  If anything, I needed tri spec and if I had it I would have had three tank specs on my warrior and three disc specs on my priest.

There was never such a thing as a right spec or a wrong  spec when it comes to the roles for tanking or healing.  If you are DPS it was usually an easy decision.  If marksman sims best at the moment then you make your hunter marksman.  Simple as that.  On rare occasion there might be need for another ability in the mix.  Like needing concussive barrage for the beth fight.  So that would be one of those rare occasions it might be good to have two marks specs.  But over all, with DPS there was always a right and a wrong.

Tanking and healing is never that easy.  You could tank single target great with an AoE tanking build and you could tank AoE stuff with a single target build as well.  What it usually came down to is what the group you ran with had and needed and what you are most comfortable with.  So unlike a damage dealer, you had a choice.

Same goes for healing.  Some people liked to go into strength of soul for disc while others avoided it completely.  I have two totally different disc specs and strength of soul is in neither whereas another person in my guild, after I convinced them that disc healing is leaps and bounds better than holy, added strength of soul to his spec because he considered it required.  Two different outlooks, both with excellent outcomes, all based on opinions and neither is wrong.  My numbers might still be better than his but that has nothing to do with strength of soul, that has to do with him having never played disc before and me having played it since the beginning of time.

Speaking of the beginning of time on my priest, it leveled PvP.  A PvP spec is another completely different spec from either of the two I use now or the one the other priest uses.  So here we go, looking at four totally different disc healing specs and all four are, for lack of a better word, viable.

For tanks and healers there have always been specs based on what is best to have but there are usually some points you can spend on flavor, even now with fewer swing point options, the ones where you turn your tank spec into a kiting spec, or an AoE spec, or a DPS tanking spec, or a threat tanking spec.  There might be a suggested spec, but there where always different things you could do and not be wrong.

Now, with mists coming, and all specs have everything they are ever going to offer there will be no choices anymore.  No more will I need to have a tanking spec for main tanking, for off tanking, for kiting, for DPS, for PvP, for whatever.  My tank spec is my tank spec and that is all it will ever be.  No choices here. 

The flavor now comes from glyphs and those 6 talent points, all of which I can change on the road at any given moment as long as I have some dusts of disappearance.  This is why I no longer need two tanking specs.  I do not need my add spec and my main spec.  If I need to switch from one to another I just change some things with a dust of disappearance.  I must say in a way that is awesome.  No need to have two tank specs because if you needed to switch a few times in one raid for certain fights, just change some things around with dusts and you are good to go with one tank spec.

That also means I need to learn to do something else on my warrior and priest.  No longer can I say that I do not have a DPS offspec on my warrior, that my second spec is for add tanking.  I could just switch some things around if I need to tank adds.  I need to get a real offspec now.  I need to do arms or fury.

Mists might be a long way away still but I might as well get into the idea that my warriors are not all tanks and my priests are not all healers any more.  They can now be something else.

This is a whole new world for me.  I am a purist.  Warriors tank and priest heal.  Anyone doing anything different is wrong.  End of story.  Well, the story just got a sequel because of the changes coming in mists and this grumpy elf needs to find offspecs for his warrior and his priest.

I made the first steps last night.  I deleted my add kiting spec from my warrior.  Not like I had used it often anyway.  The last time it got any regular use from it was on Mal in BWD. I love that fight.  I love add tanking.  I know, the grumpy one is also a strange one.  Most tanks hate add taking.  I just like it because it feels like I am doing more than just standing there getting beat on but that is another story all together.

I switched up to an arms spec.  Like I said, DPS is easier when deciding on a spec.  Where there is no right and wrong for healing and tanking but there is a clear cut best spec for damage dealing.  Arms can go two ways.  It could go with a little extra in the AoE department or a little extra in the single target department.  I decided to go a little extra in the single target department.  After all, that is what should be the main concentration most of the time.

All my warrior's DPS gear is ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still had a green piece, a few 333 blues and only one trinket so I am stuck using one of my tanking trinkets.  Can you tell I never took gearing up for an offspec seriously on this character?  The only DPS type pieces I had where ones that I had won on greed rolls in randoms where there was no enchanter to disenchant or on the rare occasion I needed for the sake of an offspec I knew I might never even make or use.

So I entered the world of non-instant queue time on my warrior for the first time at 85.  I got well of eternity, it went kind of well but scared me a little bit because I was the top DPS on that one guy at the beginning where it always seems everyone is huge DPS.  That would not be so bad if it where not for the fact this was my first time ever playing DPS on this character at 85 and the fact I only did 14K.

Okay, 366 equipped item level I should be doing more than that, but having no experience, no gems, no enchants, I had some hopes that I could do this and as least pass it off as I know what I was doing thanks to the 15% random buff.

We work our way through things to the first boss.  I am no longer #1 in DPS, the tank is.  Which to be honest is not uncommon there.  However, I am number two.

We knock out the first boss, no problems, the DPS in this group is nothing to write home about and I am surely not helping matters any either being new at it, ungemmed and unenchanted.  I still did 17K, which I was happy with.  When we looted I was more than just happy, I was ecstatic that the DPS plate belt dropped and I won it.  I just replaced a 318 green.  How is that for lucky?  Replaced my worst piece on my first boss as a DPS.

Like I said, the group was nothing to write home about.  The DPS was less than you might expect to see now but I would hazard a guess the group was something like myself.  All people that knew what they where doing but all trying new characters or new specs.  For our low group performance we executed perfectly and had no wipes and no issues.  Everyone did what they where supposed to do, which in a random is like winning the lottery, the odds of a full group of knowledgeable people is a rare thing.

This little win of a group in the world of randoms made me think that perhaps I should try new things out a little bit more.  Maybe test some specs I have not played much.  Maybe build up the confidence to work on my warrior and priest offspecs for the first time.

I should admit I did cheat a little and that might be the reason I did okay my first time in as an arms warrior.  Although I was ungemmed, unenchanted and inexperienced I did spend a good half hour on the dummy before I even considered going into a random.  I think that is the only reason I did even half way decent.  I practiced ahead of time.

I did three more runs with my warrior as DPS, did them in an all guild group this time.  So with no 15% buff my numbers where a little lower of course but over all with each run I got a little more comfortable with playing him.  By the end of those three runs I was doing more DPS without the 15% buff then I did in that first run with it.

I think I can do this.  I think I can break the mold of warriors are tanks only and priests are healers only now.  Like I said, come mists I am going to have to anyway, so might as well get a head start with it.

So my priest is up next.  Oh boy this is not going to be a fun choice at all.  I can still be a healer only on my priest.  I can go holy.  There is something about holy however that I just do not like.  I do not like the feel of holy healing.  I tried holy for a short bit in wrath and I hated it.  I was so glad when ICC came out and everyone and their mother was screaming for help from a disc priest and I got to go back to doing what I love doing, healing as disc. For a long time there it seemed like I was the only disc priest on the server too which lead to a ton of invites from people I did not even know just because I was disc.

Since ICC came out and I became disc again my main priest and all other priests I added since have only been disc.  A time has come for a change and it looks like I am going to be giving shadow a try.

Perhaps if my endeavor into shadow goes as well as my one into arms for my warrior went I might actually have another option to roll with.  In the day and age we are now, with the huge buff to DS and people looking for healers with an offspec more often, I could get some pug time in on my priest if I had an offspec.  Although to be honest I am not sure why anyone would want me DPSing when I can pump out the heals as well as I do to begin with. 

At least my priest will have much fewer gear issues to worry about.  I can, for the most part, use my healing gear to DPS in.  Being spirit translates into hit the only things I would really need to worry about changing are the tier set items for the set bonuses and I can reforge everything else as needed until I get replacement shadow only gear.

Warrior was yesterday, maybe priest will be today.

Seems like sometimes you can teach an old dog new tricks.

It took a long time but it seems I am catching up with the 21st century now and leaving behind the warriors tank and priests heal mentality.  But there is one difference with me and that thinking.  While I will finally accept that warriors and priests can DPS it will still always be offspec in my mind.  They should still be tanks and healers respectively as their main specs.  Or they are doing it wrong. ;)

Okay, so I am learning to open my mind slowly, but I am trying.

Opinion vs. Fact

I won't pretend to say I know everything about smite healing, I read a lot and have read some things for and against it.  I do know however how I feel about it and where I consider it useful.

In a PuG raid I was in over the weekend on my hunter one of the healers, who thought he was gods gift to the game, don't you love those people, was talking about how great smite healing was.  I mentioned that I was glad that more spells where being added to it and he agreed.

Later he went on to say, while others where asking him about it, that smite healing is the best way to heal five man dungeons.

I immediately disagreed.  I said, I believe in a group with all ranged DPS is it great otherwise it is not very effective. 

I said that not based on only opinion mind you but based on fact.  Apparently he did not like being disagreed with.

Being I disagreed he of course said "apparently you know nothing about smite healing" to which I had to put him in his place. 

I pointed out my very own disc priest with a disc(smite)/disc spec.  Proving I knew both of them.

You have to love people that when you disagree with them their first line of defense is that you know nothing.  They never say any facts to back up their belief that you do not know what they are talking about, they just say you don't and hope it will fly. 

Most people in game do not fight back with facts and they get away with it.  That is how people like this get the idea that they are great and know everything because no one has ever put them in their place before.  This guy had never met me.

So I started a simple fact.that smite healed the closest, neediest target which can sometimes be a pet, a blood worm, another melee, you name it.  In a group with three ranged and no melee pets smite healing is perfect for a heroic as it will always hit the tank.

He said, you (meaning me) really don't understand how it works.  It is better if everyone is melee.

I said, again, the fact that you can not target your heal from the smite, so having so many targets means the tank might not get the heal.  If I have a melee and a tank that are both low on health my priority will always be the tank, smites priority might not agree with me which means it becomes an ineffective heal.

Melee takes too much incidental damage that they will always be a possible target for the heal when you really want the tank to be getting the heal.  If you have any melee you are better off throwing a direct heal on the tank just to make sure it gets to them.

He said I was wrong and that the smite heal would always get the tank and be enough to keep the tank up even if the group is all melee.  Did something change that I do not know about because that sure as hell is not how mine ever works.

I went on to say that ranged routinely take less damage to begin with so with all ranged the smite healing always hitting the tank it is the best situation for smite healing.

Of course he went back to the good old standby.  Not the range I have met, they all suck and take more damage.  I said, then run with guild and stop running with bad players.

Hey, one good cliche deserves another and I was getting tired of dealing with someone that was trying to force his opinion down peoples throat as a fact.

I am not even sure what he said would count as opinion.  It is a fact that the smite heal will not always hit the tank.  Me saying I like to use it with all ranged is my opinion on when it is best used.  There might be better places for it or other useful places for it.  Him saying it always hits the tank in a melee group is wrong.  It is not even an opinion, it is flat out wrong.

Normally when I am in a PuG I keep my mouth shut, stay on top of the damage done meter and on bottom of the damage taken meter and basically just do my job.  This just seemed to get under my skin.

Why is it that people do not actually know how an ability works before trying to give advice on it and trying to pass it off as fact?  Even if I am sure my opinion was fact I still prefaced what I said with "I believe".  I did not pretend to know everything.

If it had just been a conversation about the ability I would have never jumped in but the questions where coming from another priest that was interested in trying it and I could not let this person keep filling them with the delusions that smite and smite only can keep up a tank and three melee in a heroic.  It can't, that is a fact.  When we over gear it like we over geared heroics at the end of wrath it might be fine but not now.

My opinion is that smite healing is fun and I will use it every chance I get.  If I heal a normal for guild I smite heal.  It is usually enough to keep everyone up, even in a melee group, and if the tank needs a little direct loving I hit them with a penance or greater heal after I hit atonement and all is well.

The fact is that bad players can still be dressed in all 359 and 372 epics.  This guy proved that.

How can someone get that far in game playing a role and still having no clue how their abilities work?

I won the argument.  They stopped arguing their opinion because I presented the facts that disproved what they where trying to state as fact.  I did it respectfully, no name calling, no cursing, no insulting them for their opinion even if I knew it was wrong.  Heck, I never even called them out saying they where wrong.  I only said I disagreed.

Either way, I did not change them.  They where still elitist pricks that don't know what they are doing and think that because they are wearing epic gear they know more then everyone else around them.  They will go on thinking what they think and I will go on thinking what I think. 

At least at the end of the game play day I know that I made my point and never had to result to using a line like "apparently you know nothing about smite healing."

I'm sorry, but if you have to start the defense of your opinion with a line like that, you lost before you even got started no matter what your gear score might tell you.

Word of acvice, if you are ever going to go toe to toe with someone like that, make sure you did do not have anything for them to pick on because then no matter what facts you have, they will never get over the fact that there is something they can pick on you for.

I got away with it because I had the right gear, spec, gems, enchants, lead in damage done, was last in damage received, and was the only person that had not messed up even one mechanic.  If anything was wrong with any of that, I would have lost that conversation because everything I said would have been replied to with, well at least I don't have a hit gem, or something like that.

Remember, bad players will always pick on you if you make even one mistake.  Never let them get the chance. 

If you are DPS, do not let lack of gear scare you.  As long as you can beat them on the damage charts no bad players with great gear will ever mention your gear out of fear that you will respond, if my gear is so bad how come I am beating you by 4K DPS.  They will never open themselves to getting hit with a line like that.

Sometimes the bad players at the top of the game are worse then the bad players at the bottom.  The bad players at the top of the game think that smite can keep a tank and three melee at full health in a heroic.

God I hate PuGs.

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.

Adventures in Priesting.

I started to level my Priest last night.  It was level 81, just a hair over it, being I had healed two runs in blackrock and was also doing the cooking and fishing dailies normally.  So I had a 1 level head start so to speak.

I played for a couple of hours and got 2 levels already.  The leveling experience is a complete and total joke now.  I never thought I would say this but they really need to do something to slow down leveling.  It is just moving so damn fast.

Think of it this way.  When a healer can get two levels by questing in less then three hours you know something is wrong.  Yes, I am leveling in Disc.  I don't have any desire to level Shadow even if it would be more effective time wise.  The leveling process is so quick to begin with.

I am also old school mentality when it comes to Priests and Warriors.  Priests should heal and Warriors should tank.  If you do not heal or tank as main spec you are doing it wrong.

Of course while leveling I am using the AA Spec.  The Archangel really seems to keep me going.  Never once did I need to stop for mana and I heal myself for an ample amount even if the self healing portion is smaller then the healing portion would be for others.

I did notice the penalty of hitting level 82 as soon as I leveled.  With the AA build I could chain pull for years on end and never be out of mana.  At 82 I actually noticed it starting to go down.  Slowly, ever so slowly, but it if I were to do 8-10 mobs in a row I might even find myself at half mana.  Something I have not experienced since healing heroics when I first hit 80.  It is something I will have to get used to and I guess this is a moderately good way to start getting used to it.

At level 82 the shield is still godly.  It would last entire fights.  Once I hit level 83 that was now a thing of the past.  Most mobs one shot the shield.  This does not bode well for leveling Disc.  Not at all.  The penalty for hitting 83 was even more noticeable then the penalty for 82 was.  The good part however is I was now leveling in Deepholm.  Mobs are mostly few and far between there so I could not exactly chain pull even if I wanted to.  So the larger mana drain was really never an issue.  The time between pulls got me back to max anyway.

Being I am leveling like lightning I set an idea in mind.  Quest until I get tabards and then move on.  Quested Vashj'ir until I opened the port, then moved to Hyjal until I was 82, then Deepholm until I got Earthern up and Thrazane unlocked and up to friendly. After hitting 83 I just did the lead in quest to Uldam so I could open that up as well.

Will quest there until 84 and go to Twilight Highlands just to do the opening quests there and unlock the port there and then I will go back to Uldam until I hit 85.  I would guess that even as a healer I could do the next 2 levels in less then 5 hours.  Maybe even 3 1/2 hours if doing 81-82 in around 2 hours is any indicator of how ridiculously stupid and easy the leveling is now. 

I imagine that on a DPS character with full rested I could get from 80-85 in less then 4 hours no problem, possibly even get it in 3 if I do not have any gathering professions to distract me.  Is it just me of does there seem like there is something horribly wrong there?

I don't know about others but I really like leveling as Disc.  It is slower then Shadow would be but it allows me to not have to have another set of gear and all I really need to make it work is have the Glyph of Smite on and it is smooth. 

I have noticed one little issue I have with things while leveling however.  The amount of healer gear from quests is extremely low.  I got two pieces in Deepholm yesterday and that is all.  I replaced some other pieces with items that where just so much better but they were not what I would call ideal healer gear.  Good thing my Priest is a Tailor.  I am capable of making a piece here and there to cover the gaps.

The drop rate of cloth seems to be better for my Priest also.  Maybe it is my imagination really or it could be because I am not leveling first aid on that character and using all the cloth for leveling my tailoring but it sure seems like I am seeing more cloth then I did while leveling my Hunter or my Rogue.

Looking to the future and the dungeons that are going to be my next step after 85 and I am beginning to question being Disc a little.  As normal mobs are destroying my shield in one shot now I am left to think how useful a shield will actually be in the damage mitigation department.  Is it really going to be worth wasting the mana on something that will not even completely stop one hit?

Shielding was usually my way of raid and dungeon healing.  DPS would take AoE damage here and there and 90% of the time a shield would be more then ample to handle anything that came their way while I concentrated on keeping the tank up. 

From my experience in heroics on my Hunter there is a lot more AoE that is unavoidable or even incidental and that damage is not just tickling people.  Like the second boss in GB when he turns and decides that he wants to shoot his fire at you.  Even if you move instantly you will get hit by 2 or 3 ticks of it and that is 20K per tick.  A shield is just not going to cut it to get someone into a safe health position if that happens.

Using my experience as a DPS for these fights I will decide what I believe to be the best healing practice.  On something like that an instant shield and renew will buy some time for the person to move and then I will have to decide on if I want to throw a heal or something else on them based on their life.  But having better shields would be nice.  A shield that would at least last long enough for them to get out of the fire would be a god send but I do not see that happening until I completely over gear heroics.

I am liking the prospect of the challenge that heroics will carry with them but I am worried about the quality of DPS in the game.  The same people that I dread running with on my Hunter will be the people I have to run with on my healer.  That is scary for more reasons then one.  The one being that if I am healing I know that my DPS is not there.  I do not want to get into a boss fight and see everyone 8K or less on boss fights knowing that I could do more while half asleep. 

The better the DPS are at their job the better I can be at mine healing.  The difference between me going oom causing a wipe and a successful run is the difference of having 3 DPS doing 10K each and 3 DPS averaging 7K. 

Even in the laughfest that WotLK was I would see DPS doing 1K in heroics.  So far Cataclysm has been no different.  I was in a group with me doing 12K (no heroic gear remember) and the other two DPS doing 4K and 5K in heroic gear.  If I am healing then my 12K DPS is not there and sorry, but I am not going to heal for people that can not pull at least 8K.

One run where we had people coming and going we went through an Elemental Shaman doing 5K, a Ret Pally doing 4K, another Ret Pally doing 5K, an Enhancement Shaman doing 3K and finally a Mage that rocked at 6K.  I am not shitting.  By the point the Mage came along I was happy to see 6K.  If it where not for me pulling 11K and a DK pulling 12K we would have never finished that dungeon.  If I see DPS on a boss fight like that I will have no issues leaving the group.  At least as a healer I know I can be back into one instantly.

That instant dungeon queue is also why I said while leveling I want to get all reps to at least friendly.  No need for more, the tabards will get me all the rep I need the rest of the way.

My one worry about healing is AoE healing.  I have never felt comfortable with it.  I've read on how to do it and I have tried it in practice and I always feel like I am doing something wrong.  I always feel like I could be doing better.  I always feel like there is something I am missing.  I get nervous when I heal.  I mean real life nervous.  As if these people really did depend on me.  I think I take healing way to serious.  I never want to see anyone die and it bothers me when I lose someone and when there is huge AoE I always seem to lose someone.  I need to work on that one area more then anything else.

I am guessing that this weekend I can get my Priest to 85 and maybe even my Druid to 85 which also has healing as an offspec.  Then it becomes time to start working on gearing up my healer(s).  My druid is a bear but I will not tank in a random.  Ever again.  Tried that in the easy LK content and it was horror story after horror story so I am never even going to consider attempting it in Cata.  Not even if you paid me. 

You could offer me 500 bucks right now to tank just one heroic and I would say no thank you.  The retards that play this game could not do what they where supposed to do when it was easy, I have no faith in them being able to do the right thing when it requires more then 2 brain cells.

I will gear my tank this time the same way I did last time.  I'll run full guild five mans once in a while when I have some time.  I won't gear up fast but the piece of mind I gain from not running randoms is well worth being slow to gear up.

Ever since a healer refused to heal me because I was hogging all the mobs and if I wanted to fight all the mbos myself I could heal myself.  But I'm the tank?  That doesn't mean you can't let other people fight any of the mobs.  I have hated tanking in pugs since.

Healing is just so much easier.  Step out of the bad.  Keep everyone alive.  No DPS epeen to worry about.  No aggro monkeys to worry about stealing my threat.  Just heal.  So much easier.

Relearning Healing.

Being it is dead at work today (snow day in new york) I've been doing a lot of reading.  I want to get back into healing so badly but the mana issues with priests have been scaring me away.  To compensate for this I am going to ask my guild for some assistance.  Helping me relearn how to heal.

I was never a great healer but in LK it was a lot easier due to the mana regen being through the roof.  It made up for a lot of mistakes on my part.  Now those same mistakes could very well be a wipe if I make them as I need to make every point of mana count.

I like to play as Disc.  I tried Holy and I did not feel very comfortable with it.  It felt like a much stronger healing spec but it went away from my feeling on how I personally like to play.

I play every game I've ever encountered defensively.  A solid defense wins battles every time.  Once you can create a solid defense then any added offense just makes it easier.  This is why I seemed to gravitate to the Disc spec.  It is, as I consider it, a defensive healing spec.

A shield stops damage before it comes.  In my own opinion it is always better to not receive damage then it is to try and respond to damage.  This is the reason I love Disc.  This is also not as possible as it was in wrath.  In wrath I could shield anyone that lit up red and most likely they would take one or two hits at most before the tank got the mob back and I never needed to worry about them.  That does not seem like it will be the case any more which means I need to change my train of thought.  It is why I must relearn how to heal.

While reading on the forums and over at plus heal and a few blogs I go to that are Priest or Disc blogs I've seen that there is not a lot of love lately for the Disc spec as a whole.

Some people are swearing by the AA spec with smite healing while others are saying that while gearing up it is not a very effective way to heal.  I can understand that.  Running out of mana seems to be an issue for every Priest out there and throwing some smites here and there becomes harder and harder as people are taking more damage and the heal is not exactly what we would call a smart heal.

As a few people stated they can go completely AA spec in a 5 man with no melee DPS.  The smite heal will always get the tank.  With a shield and a prayer and smites flying left and right their numbers prove that they are doing the same amount of healing as they would when direct healing but they are also doing damage at the time time. 

This type of healing makes your offensive ability a defensive ability in a sense.  If you are constantly spamming smite you are creating a situation where you can pop your angel when you need the big AoE heal with some extra power and regenerate some mana at the same time.  If you know the big AoE heal is not going to come you can pop it any time it is five stacks just for some mana regeneration.  Being it is not on the GCD you can pop it mid smite and not lose even a moment of cast time.  That is the biggest plus.

What the problem comes is when there are some melee in the group.  The smart heal is not exactly smart and it could start healing melee or even worse, healing melee that do not even need a heal.  This would keep the steady flow that is going to the tank from happening which means time for more direct heals.

Being I can not make sure that I get a good party, and by good party I mean all ranged, I am going to have to shy from that type of healing for the time being.  This will be another time to relearn how to heal.  After the changes I was doing ICC as all smite heal most of the time.  With unlimited mana it was never and issue.  In dungeons when I would do a random just for fun I would sometimes even pull top DPS while healing everyone.  Now that is really fun.

I have two specs for my Priest.  It was Disc/Holy and it was Disc/PvP Disc but now I am thinking of making it Disc/AA Disc.  This would give me both options when I enter a dungeon.  I get to see the make up and decide how I should play it.

The problem I seem to be having on the forums right now while trying to learn is the same problem I mentioned about the AA spec.  People love it and people hate it.  No one has any concrete data on if it is good or if it is not.

What I see most often is people saying the make up of their group and the gear level of the group and the awareness of the group and so forth.  Being all those things are potential wild cards I can not exactly go out and choose a spec and hope for the best.  That is like betting on a horse race.  If everything goes right the favorite will win and if everything goes wrong the horse will break its leg when it steps out of the starting gate.

Everything is still so new that no one knows what would be best to learn with.  Every guide talks to people as if they were light of dawn healers before the buff came out.  I need to find a guide for me.  A guide for someone that only started healing in the last 6 months of wrath.  A guide for someone who can learn and does learn quickly but does not assume that I already know everything they are talking about.

I read one post that had such fantastic information but everything was prefaced with lines like "when you would do xxx back in BC but have not used it since you need to go back to doing it that way".  Thanks for the fantastic information but don't you understand that not everyone was healing in BC?  If you are going to make a statement like that then please explain what you mean by it for the noobs like me.

I do not want it to be like wrath.  It was not a great deal of fun just shielding and throwing a flash heal once in a while.  That is why I loved when the talent changes came.  It gave me something to do again.  I could smite.  I was not just sitting around waiting for things to happen, I could do things.  Now healing is all about doing things all the time but with limited resources.  I like that.  It gives me a chance to prove to myself if I can do it or not.  I like the challenge.  Kind of like how my most hated character, the rogue, was my second 85.  I did it to prove I could do it. 

I like a challenge and sadly I can't get that any more as a DPS.  First off it is impossible to get into groups as a DPS because of various reasons and secondly it loses its fun when I am running as MM (which is considered the worst Hunter spec) and I am still destroying everyone in highest damage, lowest damage taken, most interrupts, etc.  There is no challenge there any more.  Focus was a huge challenge for me.  I hated it, still do really, but I met that challenge and it is time to move on.  If I could raid it might be different but on my server, which sucks about more then any other server in the game, that is not going to happen for at least 3 months.

So with the want for a challenge and the desire to find something fun about this so far horrible expansion I am going to try to pick what is hardest and that is heal.  And my Rogue, I hate the class mechanics, energy is worse then focus.

I might even go full tilt and make all four of my healing classes healers.  Number one however is that I want to heal with my Priest.  I like healing with my Priest and as I always tell people that I raid with that have offspecs I want them to do what they enjoy.  People always do better in the role they enjoy.  So I think I would be a better Disc Priest then I ever would be a Resto Shaman or Druid.

I just need to get used to the fact that I can no longer heal like I used to.  I used to heal preemptively.  I was able to mitigate all damage from everyone save the tank which needed more work some time.  I love that defensive style of healing and I will miss it being as effective as it was but I welcome to challenge.

Now to just find some Disc guides to relearn from that are aimed at LK healers and not life long healers.  I know I am at a disadvantage but I believe my desire to learn will make up for a lot of that.  Not to mention having one hell of a great Priest healer in my guild that I can pester with questions once in a while.

I am however convinced that for the start at least I will go with the Standard Disc Spec and the AA Disc Spec to start out with.  Maybe I might have a future in Holy but that is unlikely.  My Paladin would be my Holy healer, not my Priest.

Now to try and find more sites to read from.  Damn it is boring as hell at work today.

Mssing The Tree and Other Healer Stuff

I've run with a few druid healers since the changes and it just feels wrong.  I will get used to it in time but not seeing a tree around is really bugging me.  I know it is only a cosmetic thing but seeing the tree stood out.  When I am on my Hunter I usually stay toward the back near the healer.  I keep second guessing myself when I stand next to a night elf.  It just does not feel right.

The think my biggest gripe is that Druid healers do not really look much like healers in my mind when they are not in Tree.  A Priest you can see it a healer.  A Shaman, less so and a Paladin less so but they still look different enough.  A Druid without a shape just looks wrong.  It just looks like you have a night elf tagging along not doing anything.  Sure, I know they are healing but they just look horrible doing it.  We need Tree back.  I do not like these elves trying to pass them off as healers.  It is not right.

So with the need to PuG for 2 healers the other night the absence of healers is glaring lately.  With 3 possible healers away at the moment and no certainty that they will return come Cataclysm we are going to need to get more healers.

With the plans Blizzard announced to make healing and tanking more difficult to make it more enjoyable I do not see there being many new healers coming up.  I also see a lot of healers quitting over it.  I understand the challenge of things and how that can make it exciting but there will not be enough people that like that to keep the servers stocked with enough healers (and tanks) to make raiding viable for many guilds.

The thing blizzard does not understand about making things more challenging is that not everyone likes a challenge and not every challenge is the same.  While I DPS on my Hunter I had looked to the simulators and saw that with all possible raid buffs and debuffs my best possible DPS should be around 9K based on my gear.  So it becomes a challenge for me to try and get the most out of what I have.  Managing procs and such I have been able to toast what the simulator says is the best I can do.  I've done 11K (outside of ICC) even if the simulators said that I would top at 9K.  See, that is a fun challenge.  The reason it is a fun challenge is because in most cases if I did not meet the challenge and only did 8K no one would complain.  It is still good enough. 

With adding challenge to healing they are creating a situation like I mentioned with my Hunter but for a healer.  However the huge difference is that if the healer makes the wrong decisions on which heal to hit and which person to heal then people die.  For my Hunter the options are limited.  Shoot single target, AoE, or target adds.  All of that is usually not an opinion sort of thing.  You know what you need to do.  You follow your rotation or priority, whichever your class uses, and you move along.  Sure there is a lot of adjusting to do so you get out max DPS and it can be very challenging to do so but it is not like the challenge that a healer deals with.

Why are they adding difficulty to something that can very well be extremely difficult to begin with?  If me as a hunter needs to move and it lowers my DPS for a few seconds it is no big deal but if me as a priest needs to move and it lowers my options to heal then someone can die.  Healers have enough challenge as it is.  Why add more?

Lets talk ez mode, so to speak.  Back in BC hunters where ez mode, just hit steady shot six thousand times and you will be fine.  Whatever finger was over that one button will probably be swollen but you did the best you can do easily.  Paladins while level were ez mode and some say end game where. I have not personal end game experience with it but I can surely say leveling a paladin is/was ez mode.  Never below 95% health, never below 95% mana, and you kill everything in your sights, even things 7 or 8 levels higher then you without breaking a sweat.  Mages are ez mode now and before.  I am still in all quest gear with the exception of 2 drops I got from heroics and I am already leading the DPS charts in the dungeons I am in.  Pressing 2 over and over is just so freaking hard you know.

Why not make an ez mode healer or an ez mode tank?  I know now that we over gear things it is like that to some extent and that will always happen when we over gear things.  What we need are the flavor of the month healers and tanks.  People hate those face roll flavor of the month DPS characters and I can understand that.  People roll them because they are easy.  However, when things change and they are not easy any more you get some of those people that stick with it and become truly great at the class.

There will always be good players and bad players.  Good players play what they like to play or what their guild needs.  Bad players play whatever is face roll.  Being most of the people that play the game would be closer to what is called a bad players that means that most of the players are DPS.  That is the reason you always find people looking for healers and looking for tanks.

Make a healer class face roll for a while and let the bad players play that.  It is not a bad thing, hear me out.  Healers have enough to do as it is right now.  They need to decide what spell to use and it seems like there are more healing spells for a healer then there are damaging spells for a DPS.  They need to decide who to heal, the type of heal they need, the mana required for it, how long the fight is going to be so you know when to heal right away and when to conserve, when AoE will be coming, priority on who to heal once the AoE hits, etc, etc, etc.  Anyone that has ever healed will tell you that there is a lot more going on for a healer then for any other class in the game.  A tank gets beat on, DPS beats on the one that is beating on the tank, they all have a singular focus whereas the healer has to worry about all of them as well as themselves.

Making a face roll healer is also not the same as making a face roll DPS.  My Mage can pull upwards of 4500 DPS in all quest greens just by hitting the 2 button.  That is face roll.  A healer can never be that face roll.  They still need to watch all their fellow adventurers but it can be made to be much easier.  Make a healing class simple.  One HoT that has fast, large ticks.  One powerful direct heal.  One AoE heal.  That is it.  Simplify their life.  No more choosing which spell.  It will make it easier for them.  This will make more people want to be healers.  Sure, this class should not as effective as the others but it would really help with the lack of healers around to begin with and the major lack of healers I am expecting once Cataclysm hits and they make healing more challenging like they want to.

After some time you can change things up some and make it harder and maybe but they enough people will have fallen in love with the class that they will keep playing the class and helping the balance.

Back to what made me think about healers and the lack of them in my guild at the moment.  I've leveled my Priest to heal for the group but that is not my main.  My main is my Hunter and that will not change.  I am invested in my Hunter.  Time played, achievements done, mounts collected, pets collected, etc.  While there are some really annoying changes with it that I would rather never had happened it is still my main and will remain that way.  If I could transfer achievements to another character then maybe I would consider moving over to a healer full time.  Being that will never happen, I will not be changing.

If I was to change however what would I do?  I love my Priest.  Disc is amazingly fun and versatile but we have a priest in the mix so for best buffs and options I would need to choose one of the other three.

Shaman:  I am enhancement and have no resto gear what so ever.  So not only would it be learning something new it would be gearing something new.  From what a few resto shaman friends told me resto healing is like one of those "for dummies" books.  Resto healing is healing for dummies.  So maybe it is face roll and I just do not notice it?  I can say one thing for sure.  My Enhancement Shaman would occasionally throw a heal and its heal is usually on par if not great then my Disc Priests heals.  Imagine what it would be like in resto.  I might be willing to try it but would not look forward to gearing up for it with only a few weeks left in the game so to speak.

Druid:  I have all my resto gear already.  Have my spec all made.  Have no desire to ever use the gear or the spec.  No tree means no interest in playing it for me.  It is really that simple.  I wanted to be a Druid healer to be a Tree, not to be an Elf.  I already am an Elf. When I play something else I do not want to be an Elf.  I want to be a Tree, that simple.  If they bring Tree back I would gladly be a Druid healer again.

Paladin: I'm only level 49, what can I say.  I am Ret.  I can tank as Ret.  I can heal as Ret.  I can DPS as Ret.  So having a dual spec this early for that character has not even come to mind yet.  Getting to 80 before Cataclysm would not be a problem if I actually tried.  My Pally is a dual gatherer so I would be leveling like lightning.  Would I want to heal?  From what I hear it is not a lot of fun like the other classes can be and add to the fact that there is something wrong with a character wearing plate and being such a pansy ass that they stand away in the back. At least getting gear would never be a problem.  Gearing up a Pally healer is the easiest gear ramp up of everything in the game.  Not sure I would like the style.

Priest:  This is my healer.  It is Disc and Holy.  I really only heal Disc.  Holy does not appeal to me.  I like preemptive healing and not responsive healing.  With that in mine Druid might have worked for me with it's myriad of HoTs, to bad it lost tree and is no longer an option.

If I were ever to switch to a full time healer for my guild I would PuG with my Hunter which would still create problems because my Hunter would be my first priority.  I just do not have a good outlook for healer recruitment being the changes that are coming.  I do not see many healers coming up the pipes.  The only ones I do see are Disc Priests because in truth when it comes to enjoyable play as a healer there really is no other option.  They can DPS, Heal, Assist and PvP well in one spec.  Why would you ever want to play another type of healer?

The future of healers looks really bleak and unless Blizzard does something to make healing ez mode there will never be any sizable amount of new players taking it up.

In all honesty I do not care if my healer had it easy because they are so over powered and only need to hit one button.  All I want are a few freakin' healers so I do not need to be one full time.  I should not need to switch to be a healer, there should be more in the game.  If the lack of healers around is not a glaring design flaw on the part of Blizzard I do not know what is.

A Tank and a Healer is really all that is needed now.

The whole looking for dungeon system has just become a version of carry the DPS now.  I've always been one to day DPS is needed for various things and it sure helps but with the advent of the recent changes to the game mechanics, the new skills and the over gearing that happened, DPS is really just not needed any more.

Any half way decent tank and a disc healer can clear any 5 man dungeon in record time with some serious DPS, more then really is needed to clear a 5 man.  I remember back when I first started doing dungeons they considered 1200 DPS to be acceptable and 1500 DPS to be good or even really good. 

With the setup I just mentioned and the tank getting vengeance stacks and the healer playing smite healing the two will combine for, at worst, 6K DPS which is way more then what was originally needed for dungeons at level 80.

While it is possible for many classes to solo heroic 80 content, my hunter has been doing it since before ICC gear even, it is faster for sure when you have a healer backing you up and of course some DPS to burn down the mobs.

Being the healing will be DPSing mostly and the tank has increasingly huge attack power because of vengeance the DPS spots are more then filled.  The tank is not only tanking but it is filling the spot of 2 DPS and the healer is filling the spot of one DPS.

All the tank does is what their job is, hold aggro by beating on the mobs and all the healer does is what I healer does, heal.  The huge difference here is that now a disc healer using smite healing can be pulling off amazing damage as well as healing the tank.

With the new set up whenever a disc healer casts smite it heals the closest friendly target for an amount equal to the damage done by the smite.  So my smite hits for around 3K and crits for 6K.  That means that my tank, as the only friendly target near the mobs, is getting healed for 3K and 6K with every smite I make.

I had some fun doing some smite healing yesterday in the horseman event.  You know the bug that always disconnects people, well it happened in the run I went on.  The only people that did not disconnect was me and the tank.  The tank was worried, I said, don't worry and started casting smite.  It healed him.  We moved along nicely and HH went down in record time even.  We did not need any DPS to speed things up, they went fast enough as it is.

I did a violet hold run as well.  Smite healing all the way, even on bosses.  I did throw shields on everyone between pulls but it was more of a precaution, it was not actually ever needed.  I would hit my archangel every 5 smites to give myself wings because you know wings freaking rock and there is no reason to to have them on.  When the dungeon was done I had only cast 2 direct heals, both on the last boss.  I had 2400 DPS, more then ample, and everyone was healed well enough to never question the fact I was DPSing.  Oh, and I had wings the whole time so that means I was regaining mana the whole time.  When the last boss bit the dust I was at 100% mana.  Nothing wrong with that is there?

Then I had some friends that were working on collecting souls for shadowmourne that wanted to do a rep run so I volunteered to heal for them.  It was fun.  Even thought not many where over geared the 30% buff make it a quick rep run.  I did my shielding thing, mending thing and then started my smiting thing.  Woohoo, wings again, and damage, and healing.  I am so loving healing now.  I am sure it will not be like this on content that I do not over gear but for now it is fun.

One problem however in a raid environment is that you still need to keep and eye on heal bars being the smite heal is not a smart heal.  It does not go to the closest person that needs a heal, it goes to the closest person even if they are at 100%.  Usually that is the tank.  In a raid environment it might go to the tank that does not need the heal.  So while it is fun, you still need to pay attention to things.  If the smite healing was smart healing then I could see healing only that way which would be exciting for sure.

For leveling or doing elite quests when the time comes it seems like working with a tank and disc priest will be all you would need to tackle anything at the moment.  It is a really over powering combo with the smite healing.  Just remember if you plan to run a smite heal duo, group or even raid to put on your glyph of smite which increases your chance to hit with smite by 18% which more then assures you will never miss.

With the lack of fun hunters are at the moment and the increasing amount of fun disc priests are now I think for the rest of this expansion I'll be running as a healer more then a hunter. 

The hunter system is just too damn clunky now and the whole 3 button thing is rather annoying.  Where is the skill playing a hunter now?  Where are the options?  With focus as it is you really never have options.  It is either A or B depending on where your focus is and what skills are available. Not much fun in just following an instruction booklet so to speak where as the addition to my priest of the smite healing now gives me something else to do while healing besides just being bored and hoping someone gets hit so I have something to do.  Disc healing got more dynamic and I love it.  And did I mention I also get wings with it, yeah, awesome, I know.

On a side note.  DKs are more over powered then they were even when they were first added now.  I am seeing DKs, good and bad ones, pulling double the DPS they used to while doing less.  No wonder I see no whining on the forums from DKs.  They don't want the programmers noticing that they can now pull 10K DPS in quest greens.  Seems every class got huge buffs in damage, tanking and healing and hunters (with rets too maybe) being the only ones that took a hit. 

And on another side note. While I have noticed they toned down the AoE of all classes they increased the single target of all of them so much that hunters are no longer even being invited to raids.  Yesterday I saw it in trade twice already and I expect to see it a lot more.

/2 LF 3 DPS for OS 3D, no hunters.
/2 Looking for 1 tank, 1 healer and lots of DPS for ICC 25 fresh run, no hunters.

Yeap, both real things I saw from trade.  See, it is not only the hunters complaining, everyone else knows it already too.  I am pulling close to the same DPS I did before the patch after some work on my rotation but now I am clumped with the rest of the hunters that are not getting invited.  So I am guilty by association.  Sucks to be a hunter now-a-days even if you are a good one because the name hunter alone means you are not going to be getting any invites.  No invites, clunky system, even if we could do the same DPS as before or more, it is just no fun playing a hunter right now.  Unless you are soloing, that has really gotten better believe it or not.

OMG I've Got Wings.

Okay, lets step away from the grumpiness for a moment and speak about the bestest thing I have ever seen.

My priest now has wings.  How totally awesome is that?

I was in ICC the other night and looked at my shiny new Archangel spell and was wondering why it is never lighting up, I mean I was doing what I am supposed to do as a disc priest so why was nothing triggering it.  Then it clicked.  I need to do damage to make it trigger.  So I had the time, everyone was healed and shielded so I threw out a smite and my Archangel lit up.

So what is a priest to do?  I hit the damn thing just to see what it was like.

I have wings.  I could not restrain myself as I said on vent.  Look, I have wings.  I started dancing around with my wings and spamming shields, can't stop doing my job of course.

She looks so cute running around with her wings.  I am going to make sure I pop my wings every given chance I can when doing dungeons or raids or even soloing.  I love them.  Sure, they will help with mana regen but who the hell cares.... I have wings.  I love it.

Greatest.  Update.  Ever.

I Suck as a Healer

Okay, maybe I am being slightly over critical of my own performance as a healer but over all I still need to learn a lot.  I did three randoms yesterday and they where basically a joke.  A shield and a renew here and there and I could basically tab out the rest of the run.  How exactly am I supposed to learn how to heal this way?

I need to do something, be reactive, throw heals more then once every 15 seconds to renew a shield.  I am not uber geared yet, well, maybe for heroics I am, but I am not about to cake walk through the game at all.  I think I am sitting at 4600 gear score which is not a lot and relatively easy to achieve.  I got my first frost piece yesterday and will keep plugging along but by just doing dungeons I think my learning experience is about done there.

The higher my gear score gets the higher the gear score of the people I am placed with will be which means doing heroics, unless I get a clueless tank, is nothing more then to get some frosts.  There is nothing more I can learn there being I am never tested and never pressured to have to decide on who lives and who dies.

I joined in on Dreamwalker in ICC last night because they wanted to try with a third healer to help some and it was nearly the end of the run so there were only a couple of tries left anyway.  I joined in and was put on raid heal assignment by the lead healer.  As raid leader myself I told everyone the deal, do not attack anything until they get to the middle.  In case you did not know, the mobs will not make any offensive moves until someone makes contact with them.  By letting them get to the middle you are keeping the action in one area making it more controllable and allowing the use of AoE.  It started out fine, everyone was keeping healed and when anything was going to do some AoE like lay waste I got everyone with a shield before hand and no one took any damage from it before the skelly died.

As more mobs started to come out faster things got a little more hectic.  I kept up doing my deal.  Shielding everyone and healing anyone that needed it with a few renews flying around.  All fine and dandy so far.  Thing is, as more started coming out people started to move from the pack in the middle meaning I had to start running around more.  This, in turn, meant that people where occasionally out of range.  The Hunter that was doing the kiting died first each of the two times we tried with me raid healing.  Both times he was out of range.  A lesser geared warrior was usually second to die.  After that it was somewhat okay, but without the Hunter to kite that one guy things turned bad really fast and we wiped each time.

I did what I could but I really need more experience on things and heroics are not going to cut it when it comes to learning more.  I need to get better on picking up where people are.  There were people out of range I was trying to heal where I spent way to much time trying to get to them that someone else that needed attention was not getting it.  With more gear it would be easier and I know based on pure numbers that 4600 is considered well below Dreamwalkers requirements but I can do it, I know I can do it.  That is the mark of being a good player.  Anyone should be able to heal it with a 6,000 gear score.  A good healer should be able to heal it with a 4,600 gear score. 

Just to point something out here.  No matter how good the healer is, if the people around the healer are not helping the situation, there is nothing that can be done.  Case and point, the hunter.  He was always out of range and I could never find him when he needed a heal.  Part my fault for losing raid awareness in knowing where everyone is, I should have known.  Part his fault for getting that far away.

Over all, I could have done much better then I did.  I need to work on my raid awareness for other things that I am not used to.  As a Hunter I only care about 2 things.  Where the mob I am attacking is and where the healer is.  I try to always attack the mob we are working on and I try to always stay in range of the healer.  Try being the operative word there. ;) 

As a healer I need to keep a track of where everyone is and where every mob is.  Not just the ones that are important to me like when I am on my Hunter (even if when I am on my hunter I still see everything around me.  I just do not need to move as much) because they are all important to me as a healer.  Every time I saw the skelly come out I shielded everyone.  Just in case he got the lay waste off.  If he didn't, no big deal, a shield is a good thing either way.  So noticing what mobs are there even if you are not the one fighting them is important.  The main thing I need to work on is noticing where people are.  I think I did a horrible job at finding people.

It was like a game of where is waldo.  I would see someone taking damage, see them out of range, do a 360 around the room looking for them (so much easier when you use a trackball) and when I did not see them I would start running all over the place to find them.  I looked where they "should" be first.  They, of course, where never there.  I will not blame them.  As a DPS main I know sometimes things will drag you away from your expected course.  I am only blaming myself for not finding them sooner.

For now I think that makes me suck as a healer and with heroics being a joke now there is no place I am really going to get to go to learn how to be better at raid awareness. No one does low level raids any more so there is nothing for me to join to get some experience and they look to blow through it.  If I fail in that surrounding I might as well just give up trying to be a healer.  I will be blacklisted as a bad healer forever more.

So the choice is, heal tons of heroics hoping for a bad group to put me to the test or advertise in trade and find myself a group I know will test me.

/2 Disc Healer looking for fresh 80 tank to chain run heroics.

Now that would either teach me how to get better... or make me bald from pulling out my hair.

Things I Learned From Healing

I've been doing my daily dungeon on my Priest every day.  I know, amazing right, never got into that on my Druid and stopped running on my Hunter ages ago unless I am bored one day.  In that time running my Priest I have made a few observations.  Little things that I never noticed before.

Paladins and Death Knights are aggro whores.  Seriously, do they ever have anything to help with their aggro?  My Pally is only 40 and my DK I soloed to 80 and it has not left a city since then, it is my bank character.  I don't know if they have something to reduce aggro or not but if they do I have rarely ran across a Paladin or Death Knights DPS that didn't end up needing more healing then the tank did.  Also, it seems Paladins are squishy for someone that wears plate, they grab aggro, I shield them, throw a renew and a flash heal if need be and go back to the tank.  By the time I get back to them they are dead.

Hunters, most of them, really do deserve the term Huntards.  I would say a good 80% of the Hunters never use Misdirection.  Trust me, I am a Hunter main, if they where using it I would see it.  They have no clue what they are doing. I had one ask me to revive his pet for him yesterday.  I said, you have a revive pet option.  A few seconds later he was standing next to a pet with low health.  I did not even ask him if he knew what the Mend Pet skill did.  I just healed it.  What the hell did this guy do when his pet died?  Did he always go out and tame a new one each time?

Bear tanks take a while to get good AoE threat.  Seems like I am the only person in WoW that knows this.  Every time I get a bear tank there is at least 1 DPS beating on crap before the bear has one lick of threat on it.  Your job as a DPS is to know your tank.  Do your freaking job.  Know that your tank needs to swipe before you start your AoE. 

Paladin tanks can tend to be an issue to heal when they are over geared.  Over geared means less damage, less damage means less healing, less healing means less mana, oom Paladin Tank means mobs all over the freaking place.  I have changed how I heal them to compensate.  I no longer shield them at all.  I do not even renew them.  If they are over geared I let them go in and get hit and then just spam flash heal whenever they take a hit.  Helps some but sometimes not enough.

Death Knight tanks seem to think it is okay to have their backs to the mobs.  Their reasoning is that they do not use a shield so they do not need to be facing the person to block, so facing them is not as important as long as they can keep aggro on them.  Dude!  First rule of tanking, never show them your back.  What the hell does a shield have to do with anything?

Warrior tanks, at least at 80, are all the same.  They never stop moving, god forbid I need a drink.  While over all they are the easiest to heal when they know what they are doing they are always in a rush.  It is like someone is holding a gun to their head and says, if you go below 50 miles per hour the bus will explode.  Oh wait, that was the movie Speed, but you get the idea.

Mages seem to grab aggro nearly as much as Paladins and Death Knights but at least they all seem quick to ice block.  I've almost gotten to the point that Mages are way low on my heal order list for that reason.  It seems that whenever a Mage takes any damage they ice block.  Is there some sort of addon that I do not know about that automatically ice blocks them if they go below 75% life or are they all just scared shitless because they are always getting themselves killed early on that they jump the gun to quickly.

Shaman and Priest DPS might as well just not exist in instances.  If the Shaman never drops a totem I would not even know they where there.  They seem to fly under the radar most of the time.  Priests are the same way.  On rare occasion do I even notice there is another one in the group.

Rogue?  What are those?  I think in all my runs I have only seen one of them and he died on the first pull and I revived him saying I was sorry, he just went down so quick.  He said, no worries, I will give your revive a work out.  He died 3 times that run.  Every time with 1 shot even though I keep a shield on him the whole instance.  That was the only one I have seen in a run.  I think Rogues are more a myth then anything else.  (for my reasoning why rogues suck and no one uses them check my post earlier today, 2 back)  Seems like I am not the only one that thinks Rogues are beyond useless.

Never run with a Druid Tree of course being I am the healer in the group, same goes for a Holy Paladin and Resto Shaman so I can not say anything about them from a healers perspective.

All the others, kitty and chicken druids, warrior dps, warlocks all seem to be average, no stereotype I can hang on them.  There are good ones and bad ones, none of them stand out more then the others. 

If anything I can note is that there are not a great deal of warlocks that trade health for mana.  Maybe it is an 80 thing with such high regen rates.  At lower levels I see them doing it all the time.  In 80 dungeons I am ready to keep dropping renews on them but never need to.

A World of Mains?

My Hunter is my first character and my main character.  I am not sure if part of the reason I love being a Hunter so much is because it is the character I first experienced nearly everything in the game on.  It was the character I was on when I first found new areas, did new quest and went through dungeons and raids with.  It was the first I did everything with basically.  Everything except heal or tank that is. 

My Priest was my first healer and my Druid was my first tank, even if I did have a DK and a Paladin made before I made the druid.  If I were to choose now to have three mains, a main tank, a main healer and a main DPS I would choose my Hunter, Druid and Priest for those three roles.

There is only one problem with that.  Outside of my Hunter, Druid and Priest I only have one other 80 currently and that is a DK that I use as my bank character.  I got the DK to 80 only so I can train up the new professions once Cataclysm comes out.  I did not want to have to go back to level it later.  I do not use the DK at all really.  It is still in quest greens and has not been outside of a major city in months.  Not even just to get a breath of fresh air.

I wonder if my opinions will change once I get the other characters to end game.  I know from the few I have experience with that I have made decisions based on role already. Each class has inherent things they need to deal with and when in a group setting how they deal with them is different. 

DPS - I have no problem with running dungeons with a DPS character.  It takes longer to get into one and there is a lot of pressure to do huge numbers even more so in heroics then ICC it seems as funny as that sounds but over all most people do not give a crap as long as things are dying fast and you are not screwing things up to make it harder for everyone else.  Gearing up a DPS player through dungeons might take time but it is actually pretty easy.  I wold go with people I do not know because no one gives a crap if someone did only 1.5K DPS if the dungeon is done in 15 minutes and goes off without a hitch.

Healer - Every time someone dies it will be your fault.  If the tank runs ahead and pulls a whole room while you and everyone else are still in the previous room, it is your fault.  If a DPS dies because they can't control their aggro and they get eaten alive faster then your fastest heal can fly, it is your fault.  No matter what, whomever dies, it is your fault.  As long as you have a little thick skin it really is not that much of a problem again.  Just say, sorry you died, was out of range or I really tied to save you but you are squishy.  95% of the time, unless it really was your fault, like not trowing any heals what so ever, no one minds a death here and there.  Nice query time and not a ton of stress as long as you have competent people around you makes gearing up a healer somewhat easy.  But at starting stages I would still only go with people I know as I am getting into the grove of group healing.

Tank - DPS is not high enough, its the tanks fault, healer is letting people die, its the tanks fault, adds come out of nowhere, its the tanks fault, all the DPS being aggro monkeys, its the tanks fault.  No matter what happens its the tanks fault.  The weather sucks today and it is raining, must be the tanks fault.  If  DPS has low DPS but is trying, its okay they are trying their best.  If a healer is having trouble keeping people alive, its okay they are trying really hard and just need some better gear.  If the tank has any issues, the tank sucks.  At least in my limited experience tanking at 80 with my Druid I can tell you I will only tank for people I know.  I will never tank for PuGs, ever.  No random heroics for me unless I can get guild group up that includes at least a pocket healer and 1 DPS.  The theory there is that I will tell the healer if the other DPS are jerks let them die and me, you and the guild DPS can do the whole dungeon alone.  (I think I am going to make a grumpy tanking post to get more into this one)

So when the time comes, as it will soon for a few of my characters, I will get some gear for my Shaman, my mage and my rogue (oh god how I hate being a rogue) but I am not sure if I will work on my warrior at all when it comes to gearing up.  My Pally is still up in the air as I do not know what the second spec will be yet.  I am leveling Retribution.

In the end, I doubt that I will ever have a great deal to compare my Druid's tanking with and my Priest's healing with.  So just like my Hunter is my favorite and my main because it was my first I think the Druid will be my main tank and the Priest my main healer because they where my first.

One thing about firsts however, once you have that first one done, the rest are a cake walk really.  After leveling my hunter all the way, taking a full month of time played I now level characters in no time at all really.  I now have no issues going into dungeons that originally I stayed away from on my Hunter.  I have experience with one character which makes doing it on others 100 times easier.  So perhaps if I ever do try another tank or another healer I might be better with them because things are always easier the second time around.

I wonder if I am the only one that ever considered having 3 mains.  One for each role.  The way I look at it, they do not really interfere with each other as I would never mix and match them.  Well... maybe I can, my druid is a bear and a tree.  Oh well.  There goes that idea.

Now it is gear up time for my Priest.

I basically geared up my hunter before the LFD system when it was actually much harder to do.  A DPS, even more so a new DPS, has a bitch of a time getting into a group.  Healers however are seemingly loved universal as long as they are trying even if they suck.  So getting a group back then would have been no problem, just like getting one now is no problem with one in the LFD system.

I ran a few heroic randoms last night and the over/under for good to bad is about 3 to 1.  For every three good ones I run there is one bad one.  Sometimes that is my fault and sometimes it is not.  I am a new healer and I make to assumptions that even thought I read what to do that I can do it well yet.  I am getting better, that is really why I am doing the dungeons, to learn.  I can afford to instantly get my a 5K gear score from the auction house but what is the fun in that.  Not to mention, I would not have practical healing experience which is what I really need.  Anyone can have gear.  It takes effort to become good. 

I had mostly good runs with averagely geared tanks.  No super tanks but some skilled ones.  They never lost aggro, they pulled LoS when needed, they did what they needed to do.  I healed through everything.  It is a lot easier when people around you know what they are doing.  A renew once in a while here and there and a shield when I know something is coming.  That is all I needed to worry about the DPS.  Binding heal has become my favorite for when I need a spot heal being I heal myself and the tank at the same time.  Can't beat that with a stick.  Not to mention it hit for nearly triple of my flash heal.

When I get a lame tank it all goes down hill fast.  Really fast.  I have still not gotten used to working in panic mode.  Panic mode is when everyone has aggro on something at all times except for the tank. Who to heal, what to heal them with, who is the tank trying to get back and such.  If the tank is about to pull a mob off someone then I do not need to heal them all the way, I can worry about others.  So knowing that is important.  Sad thing is that most tanks are unpredictable so I never know who they are going to save.  Make healing everyone a little harder and I am not doing well working in that situation.

Perfect example is on one run we get to the final boss and the Rogue grabs aggro instantly.  Ever heard of tricks?  I was so tempted to ask him.  But I had not time to type.  I was healing him as if he was the tank.  6K, 11K, 8K, renews, shields, everything I could throw out at them and I keep them up for a pretty long time but sooner or later, with others taking damage as well he went down.  The tank never had aggro for even 1 second until the rogue died.  I ended up dying as well just as we downed the boss, but we did down him so that is what matters most.  Running with people like that make life difficult.  I am a rookie, I can not handle that.  I doubt even a pro could have handled that.  Actually, a pro would have let him die if he wanted to be an aggro whore.

In the 4 runs I did we had a Warlock in each one.  I've gotten used to throwing a renew on the warlock after each pull.  No biggie.  I can't see why some people complain about that.  Even as a hunter, and I do love my pet, I do not heal pets.  It is another spot on my healbot bar and that is not needed.  Yet I have never seen one pet died since I have been healing.  Smart heals always seem to get them.

In the end I got only a trinket for an upgrade and it was a huge one going from a 105 to a 200 trinket.  Trinkets are the hardest to find I think.  I also got enough to buy me my first piece of T9.  Question is, when the time comes, what am I going to do about T10.  I think I will save up for the offset pieces first.  Things like back and waist.

I am willing to do my daily dungeon as a priest now that I have tried it a few times.  I just hope I do not get any more unskilled tanks.  All greens and unskilled makes it impossible for me to learn.  I wish new tanks would make the effort to at least get normal item before jumping into heroics like I did.  I did not spend cash on the auction house.  I went and ran dungeons.  I do love the healer query time.  Much better then my hunters time.  I am just wondering if I will ever do the heard press and knock out a ton of dungeons to get geared up faster.  Only time will tell.  All depends on how well my runs go.  They go good, I keep running.

And a Priest goes Ding!

I got my Priest to level 80 last night.  Leveling was the easy part.  Now to get into healing a daily to start working on frost badges and to chain run some heroics so I can get some decent gear to start getting some PuG invites.  The good thing is that healers are always in need on my server.  All day I see people looking for more and usually it is always 1 heals or 2 heals. 

So often I see ICC 25, LF 3 heals then gtg.  Seems that no one heals or at least once healers start to gear up they never run anything any more just for the fun of running.  I'll find out if indeed it is because it is not really fun or if they are just being jerks.  I know there are always lots of healers around it is just that they never seem to want to run.  I guess healers more then any other class are the type that will run only to help a friend whereas DPS will run whenever they can.  Looking at the need for healers everywhere I guess that is what makes them have the ability to be that selective.

I know I will get a lot of invites also from that theory.  So often I've seen people say to invite so and so and another says, but their gear score sucks to only get the reply, but they are a healer and we need one.  Healers get cut a lot of slack because you really have no choice.  I also hear a healer say I've never healed this before and get people saying just do your best.  If a DPS says that they will usually get the boot unless they are friends with someone there or have a huge gear score that people (wrongly) think will make up for the lack of knowledge of the battle.

As long as I do my best I am sure I can gear up 100 times faster then I would be able to with a DPS.  Not only do healers get dragged along more often and have quicker query times in the LFD but a healer is usually one of only a very few in a raid and with that have less people to roll against.  I am actually looking forward to the gearing up process now.  Something I dread with DPS characters.

First things first.  I need to rearrange all my key binds now.  I had mostly offensive stuff bound because I was solo questing and only had some healing stuff bound.  Now I need to switch that around and find a layout that will be comfortable for me while still keeping some DPS stuff around for when I do dailies.  Should not be all that hard, I already have some ideas in mind.

Wish me luck because you know how people in the LFD are.  Some will cut me slack, others will rip me apart.  Mostly I am hoping I get stuck with a group of people that are overgeared so we can run them fast and all I need to do is drop a shield on the tank once in a while.  Have to learn different mechanics however.  I noticed when I first tanked some of them that there were things I never even noticed where happening that were important as a tank.  I am sure there are things that happen that I never noticed as a DPS or a Tank that will have an impact on healers.  Either way, this should be fun and I am looking forward to it.