SotR: The State of Healing

Last weekend, I was leveling my Druid (AKA pretending at being a boomkin BADLY) with my friend Finalflame’s Priest.  We managed to get both to Level 90, and then we began piecing together the best iLevel gear we could find for his Priest.  We fairly easily got her to LFR, and I accompanied him with my Paladin, Lazheward.  (Yes, yes, the gender-reversal did not escape either of us.  lol)

I quickly remembered how much I enjoy healing on my Pally!

Granted, his gear is a tad high for Mogu’Shan Vaults LFR (about 501), but there were fights where he pushed nearly 40% of the overall heals, similar to my Monk’s recent LFR adventures.  Even with his gear, this surprised me.

Final was doing incredible as Holy for his entry-level gear, but OOM’ing himself regularly.

As the day and the LFR’s progressed, we chatted about what I was doing, what he was doing, what could be improved.

Healing with Laz

Many a time, Final bemoaned the fact that there was nothing to heal.  (Sorry!)  This, while I continually cast spells, and rarely stopped even when I had to move out of bad on the floor.

That was when it hit me…

On my Monk, I never stop casting unless I have to.  I am maintaining Renewing Mist.  I am Uplifting.  I am filling in with Soothing Mist to keep my Chi flowing.  I am using Thunder Focus Tea on cooldown to lengthen my Renewing Mist ticks.  I am using Mana Tea on cooldown, along with my Soothing Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault, to manage my mana.

But my Monk is a constant flow of casting/spending: mana -> Chi -> Mana Tea -> mana -> etc.

Healing with Iree (Fist-weaving)

I then thought back onto some of the frustrations of doing LFR with my Shaman recently.  During T14, when I was still raiding on my Shaman, I excelled with single-target healing.  I rarely touched my Healing Rain or my Chain Heal.  This had carried over with me from all of Cataclysm – I enjoy the triage healing that was introduced there.  But I realized in recent LFRs, that that is not performing as well as we move further through T15.  I bemoaned this fact to our guild’s now-sole Resto Shaman, Walterpayton, and he agreed with me, but admitted that Unleash Elements -> Healing Rain -> Chain Heal -> Chain Heal -> Chain Heal was his new mantra for Shaman healing.  I tried this, and quickly realized that the 8k Spirit I was carrying over from T14 was NOT cutting it in the transition from single-target to AoE.

It was a harsh reality, but one I am trying to adjust to.  Because, honestly, the game is not going to change around me – I need to evolve with the game.  I realize and accept this.

Healing with Effy

For my Monk, there was no adjustment, she is a completely new character to me.  I have no habits to carry over from Cataclysm.

But I healed in Wrath, and I remember the style of healing from then.  So let me try and impart some of that mentality onto those who may have also happily pushed it aside for triage, or did not raid before Cataclysm:

• Blanket your heals (AoE, AoE, AoE and manage those HoTs)
• ABC – Always Be Casting
• Anticipate hits/Pre-heal
• Snipe those heals!

Admittedly, I didn’t miss heal-sniping, but it has become clear to me over the course of T15 and playing my Monk, that it is once more the way of things.  Uplift and Revival are my lifeblood.  A well-timed cast of either is the only thing currently keeping me competitive as a 25man raid healer.

Maybe 10man healing is different, but I can only speak to 25man.  I do not heal in 10mans near enough to comment there.

In our 25man, it is a regular occurrence for the Druid/Monk/Shaman healers to be topping the meters, and our Priest/Paladin healers to be further down.  I have finally started to figure out why – HoTs and AoEs.  Priests and Paladins tend to thrive in the triage situations with more powerful single-target healing and bubbles.

So let me try and give some more specific pointers for the tactics mentioned above:

• Druids: Keep HoTs rolling – use these to your fullest advantage with other spells
• Monks: Keep Renewing Mist rolling on as many targets as possible – Uplift often and fill-in with Soothing Mist to keep your Chi up
• Paladins: Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn as often as possible – weave in single-target heals as needed
• Disc Priests: Always be casting Smite/Penance – Spirit Shell/Prayer of healing on all parties as you can and Cascade/Halo on cooldown
• Holy Priests: Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, Holy Word: Sanctuary and Cascade/Halo on cooldown – weave single-target heals as needed
• Shaman: Healing Rain on cooldown – Chain Heal and Healing Stream Totem while HR is down

Note: Smart Heals are your friend.  They will target and respond quicker than you can.  (Except in the annoying instance they instead heal a pet.  heh)

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I am a firm believer that keeping the raid (especially the tanks) alive is the primary goal of the healers in any raid encounter.  But as we progress through T15, especially through Heroics, I am seeing more and more need for large amounts of raid-wide healing.  This lends credence to the idea of focusing on AoE heals, constant casting, and smart heals.

I also realize that this means we probably all need more Spirit than we originally think we do.  But with gear increasing dramatically, especially with another tier coming soon, this is less of an issue than I originally thought with my Monk.  She hit 10k fairly easily, and has been increasing in small increments beyond that since.  I consider myself to be good at managing my mana and continual casting is no issue, but I find that Spirit buffer to be good for clutch/oh-shit healing AKA Surging Mist.  (It is also really nice for fistweaving, but that is beside the point.  heh)

Just remember, and I personally find this the bitterest pill to swallow: blanketing heals and constantly casting will equal a large amount of overheals.  There is really no way around this, and it is just the name of the healing game as it currently sits.

These are my thoughts, discovered through trial and error and play on my various healers, and I hope they prove to be some useful pointers to others.

~ Effy

AND I have happy news to add to this State of the Raider post: a new Heroic kill!

Heroic Iron Qon down in 25man!

SotR: A Call to Arms!

Undying Resolution, an Alliance guild on Elune, is looking for more raiders!  We raid 25man on Wednesday, Thursday, and Sunday nights from 8pm-11pm EST, and are currently 4/13 in Heroic Throne of Thunder!

We are looking for ranged DPS – specifically Shadow Priests, Balance Druids, and Warlocks of all flavors.

Those interested can fill our an application on the Undying Resolution forums, message me here (or on Twitter: @Effraeti), or contact a member in game.

~ Effy

Here are some of our most recent Heroic kills!

Horridon

Ji-Kun

Tortos

SotR: The UR Summer Party

The irony is profound, and most certainly has not escaped me…

So yesterday morning, I posted about how I finally feel like a Monk healer.  I finally feel I am growing comfortable with Ireenia and am starting to consider her my main.  I finally feel I am succeeding.

Last night was Undying Resolution’s summer party.  Amongst promotions and awards for attendance and a grand ol’ game of lawn darts (which OMG, I won!), I was surprised with the most wonderful gift possible from all of my guildies – an award for Most Improved Raider.  (Which I tied for and shared with Otoka!  Grats, O!)

That’s me, under the pile of chopped meat (which happens to be Ranico), to the left of Mindy.  You can just barely see my hooves!

I am not sure if anyone else realizes how much this – something that might seem small – means to me.

I came back to WoW in October, after a hiatus of about six months.  At the time, there was no question in my mind that I would come back on Effy, even if that meant I would likely be DPS’ing instead of healing.  Effy has always been my main and my raiding toon.  The Shaman was the one and only class I really wanted to raid on.  Heck, Effy has been my persona since I started playing WoW, and especially since I started blogging.

DPS’ing did not last (thankfully) – I am horrible at managing myself in a raid as a DPS – and I started healing on Effy again soon after returning.

I was ridiculously happy to be raiding again, and more importantly, to back with my guild, all of whom I adore to no end.  ❤

I raided on Effy through the first tier of MoP, and then made the very difficult decision to switch to a Mistweaver Monk, because we were growing heavy on Shaman and completely lacking in a reliable Monk healer.

It was a trying switch for me, having only raided on my Shaman up to that point.  It was awkward.  I missed my totems.  I missed my Shaman utilities.  I missed the buttons I knew where and how and when to press at precise times in nearly any situation.  I looked to the internet, and came back with little to help me, the Monk class being very new still.  Unlike my Shaman, there were not heaps of reliable sources from gamers who had been through trial and error and multiple tiers and expansions and changes with the class.

I felt very much on my own when I started out.

But I looked at other Monks I ran across in dungeons and LFR.  I obsessively monitored Skada.  I used the Armory.  I searched out every shred of information there was to be found, even if most of it just seemed to be more wordy tooltips of my skills and glyphs and talents.  I am even trying to get more comfortable with World of Logs and Raidbot/Epeenbot, and compare myself more there to other Mistweavers.  I wrote my best in slot lists and guides (of which I plan to write more, as well).

Through all of it, I have come to understand my Monk better.  I have learned to perform with my Monk better.  I have even started to field questions from guildies and friends about how to play a Mistweaver.  And believe me, as someone who has only played one for about five months now, and has had to kind of rebuild myself around the class, that too is awkward for me.  Who am I to tell someone else how to play this class?  Even if it is just simple guidance.  Usually a skill A or skill B and why sort of thing.

Momma Effy making an appearance and showing Iree her support.

Last night felt like a justification of my progress.  I felt like my improvement was noticed.

Now, I know I should not need justification.  I know I should not need people’s approval or commendations.  But I do.

I talked about Shaman, because I could rehash the findings of others, and add my own small two cents about what worked best for me within those general parameters.  I did not rock the boat on anything anyone else had already tried and tested.

Everything about my Monk has felt like me giving my own two cents.

My Monk has felt like a project.  A project that many times over the last several months I felt I was failing at. I cannot begin to explain how many times I wanted to run back to my Shaman.

But I kept pushing.  I kept tweaking.  I kept adjusting what did and did not work for me.  What managed my mana best?  How much Spirit?  What put out the most heals in crunch times of heavy damage?  When were the best times to use my cooldowns?  What rotation would keep me healing from start to finish, instead of scraping the bottom of my mana pool halfway through a boss fight?  What stats were most important for my Monk healing style?  What talents did or did not work for me?

And I have noticed a remarkable improvement in my performance.  I have noticed I can manage my mana through most situations, and even when I do hit bottom, I have the means to keep going.  Because if I don’t run myself out of mana sometimes, how else am I going to learn?  I have become comfortable enough to vary my rotation depending on the situation, even to the point of Fistweaving my way through most normal mode fights.

I still have much more to do, but last night, I came to the realization that I am not the only one who has seen an improvement.

Thank you, Undying Resolution.  🙂

~ Iree?

SotR: Where Do Baby Dinos Come From?

I promise there is nothing R rated in this post!

Funny story: While working on Heroic Horridon, one of the issues to come up was from where the pink dinosaurs from Dire Call spawn.  Well, they spawn right from Horridon of course.  (So apparently Horridon is a she?  Sweet.  Add her to the list of leet female raid bosses, right up there with Blood Queen and Lady Vashj.)  This trail of thought could lead to nothing but trouble, and something along the lines of the title of this post.  ❤ my guild.

I had another major epiphany during last night’s raid.  I am finally feeling like a Monk healer.  As opposed to a Shaman healer playing a Monk.

Ireenia is finally starting to feel like my main.

This is a pretty big deal for me.  Cuz honestly, I have been fighting it for – what? – 5 months now?  Ever since patch 5.2 went live, anyway.  I kept telling myself Ireenia was a temporary raid toon, bore of a need in my guild’s healing roster.  And eventually I would go back to Effy, who would always be my main.

Maybe it’s better gear.  Maybe it’s the guides I have been working on.  Maybe it’s finally creating a BiS gear list of my own.  Maybe it’s just purely a matter of time.

My Monk is feeling comfortable.  I am getting more confident.  I finally feel like I know what I am doing.  And admittedly, I am having fun.

Certainly, I miss my Shaman terribly.  I miss her utility.  I miss her totems and managing them.  I miss her healing style.  I miss my Effy.

But Ireenia is finally coming into her own.  She and I are making good progress with Heroics, and I imagine there is still plenty of room for me to improve.  So it is all upwards from here.  🙂

I will aim to post another State of the Raider, with some more actual content to it, soon.

~ Effy (Ireenia)

I also realize I have been horribly slacking on kill updates!  I never even posted our Lei Shen kill!

25man Lei Shen Down!

On to Heroics!

25man Heroic Jin’Rokh down!

We have been alternately working on Horridon and Ji-Kun in Heroic, while killing Heroic Jin’Rokh weekly.  Summer always complicates the roster, and so we have been slowly making progress in both, but without a kill yet.  But I have high hopes we will finish off Horridon tonight!

Ketchup

I really do not care for ketchup a great deal – a very tiny bit is good with french fries sometimes, though, hash browns are the one thing I really do like with ketchup – at least, not enough to so casually post with a title seeming to praise it.  It is more the fact that the English language never fails to amuse me.  Words with similar meanings, words with similar spelling, words with similar pronunciation.  So many ways to play on words.

I figured an update was long past due, my blogging has been far too infrequent lately.  But with the new job, I am just trying to stay focused where I need to be.  So far, things are going great.  My stress and anxiety are relatively low.

Speaking of focus, I have developed a spreadsheet for my Level 90’s.  Something to track who’s killed what world boss, who’s VP capped, who’s done their LFR runs.  I am even using it to monitor if I harvested and planted my farm on a toon, if they did their daily profession research cooldown, and if they did a dungeon that day.  It worked better than intended last night, Monday, the day before reset, when I am usually scrambling to figure out who needs what.  A Nalak raid formed, I knew just which toon to bring.  Sha and Galleon were next, and I knew at a glance what toons to switch to.  A few LFR runs were made, and I went on a different toon each time, based on what we queued for.  🙂

Effy and Effy waiting for an Oondasta pull

And Nalak, the World’s Worst Gatekeeper (Not only have I 20manned this guy, but this guy just lets adventurers stroll right past him into his master’s lair!)

In fact, I should just show you what the spreadsheet looks like, eh?

Oh, but while I was taking that screenshot, I realized how very awesome screenshots are from my desktop with two monitors!

HUGE!

And yes, that has been my desktop since around Christmas.

Anyway…  Even though I did not cap all my 90’s, I felt it kept me aware of what I should be working on.  And I say “should” very emphatically.  Because despite all my organization, I spent most of this past week on the wee Hunter.  Actually, she is not so wee anymore, she is 78 already.

DING!

One thing that is awesome about a Hunter, is taking great time and care to determine what pets I want to run with.  (The next step in this being to of course create a transmog outfit around the chosen pet.)

I have always liked bug pets.  The silithids and wasps are some of my favorite.  (I have mentioned before that I have a fond curiosity for the Silithids and their lore, since it was them who in fact got my interest with WoW lore started.)  So it did not take me log to decide that the rare wasp in Silithus, Rex Ashil, was the pet I really wanted.  He is unique, the only wasp of this color, and in fact the only pet with this color.  WTB silithid pet in this awesome blue-grey!

After picking my wasp up, I was talking to my guildie, Otoka (whom we all call simply O), and realized I had intended to find the perfect battle pet to name for him.  Hunter pet?  Even better!

Just for the record, apparently you cannot name a Hunter pet with only one letter.  So I could not name my wasp “O”!  So I settled for “Oh” and had a giggle with O about the philosophical significance of the name.  Not only does it give a name, but it is also a pondering noise, thus naming one for their deep thoughts.

Rosa and Oh

Rosa’s outfit to match her pet is still a slight work-in-progress.  I cannot be 100% happy with boots, it seems.  Silly humans and their FEET.  What the heck?  I am thinking of boots much like those she is wearing above, but more blue.  I think I can get some from a Dragonblight quest.  I like the black outfit with the Level 70 PvP bow very much, and I have received several compliments through whispers while doing dungeons with her.  🙂

Among doing lots of dungeons on my Hunter, I have just about caught up Sifaol, my Disc Priest, gearwise.  I have not been heavily focusing her, she progresses slowly, but she has made remarkable improvements.  I realized soon after getting her a few LFR pieces that I am quite fond of her in some current content gear.  This is even after being so appalled with her quest leveling outfit not too long ago!  Sure, the outfit is a mixture of various things (and the staff is a re-skin) and I would really like some MSV shoulders, but it looks quite good on her.

Even as a human!

I missed Atonement, I really did, and I am thoroughly annoyed that as soon as I start getting back into my Priest, Blizz is nerfing Atonement (in 5.3).  ><

Oh!  And we also got a random guild achievement the other day!

State of the Raider: Guilty Conscience Edition

Now, so that I do not feel so guilty about falling behind, I am also going to post a condensed State of the Raider!  (AKA progression and kill screenshots!)  I left off last on our Durumu kill.

The Mysterious Case of the Lemming Blobs

A strange sight, in the halls between Durumu and Primordius

I cannot quite get the oddity of this out of my head.  These lil guys just endless ooze down the hallway, and then throw themselves off the side!  It is an endless cycle of lemming-like suicide, so it seems, as they somehow flow back up to start all over again.

Poor blobs.  You should live!  There is so much out there!  Don’t give up!

Seriously, though.  GG Blizzard at giving us something to wonder about.  I cannot figure out the purpose of these guys for the life of me.

Primordius, the Visually Pleasing

Progression and Pretty Colors

Ooh, shiny!

Primordius down in 25man!

Okie, so maybe it is more my guildies and their spell effects that are visually pleasing… Either way, I was tickled by the colorfulness of the shots.

Primoridus, after what seemed forever on Durumu, went down in one shot.  He is a nifty boss, I like the idea of mutating into a Saurok for a short time.  His monologue, though, is a bit creepy and very Gollum-like.  I think this guy went down so easily because one thing that motivates my guildies is telling them “X will make you do more damage!”

I Sing the Body Animus

Dark Animus down in 25man!

Dark Animus was an okie fight.  It was pretty much all or nothing.  Either we wiped early because adds got out of control, or we killed him.  Once it is just the boss, it is a pretty straightforward tank-and-spank.  Yah yah, there is other stuff going on, but there were no transitions, it was really just a burn.

It did take us some organization and some practice to manage all the adds.  It was a different kind of fight, certainly.

Ice, Wind, and Fire… and Iron Qon

Iron Qon down in 25man!

Huh, that is my best progression shot from Iron Qon?  Bad Effy.

Iron Qon was a challenge, especially the final burn phase when it is just him.  As a healer, I got to take advantage of the preferential treatment as #1 priority to use a Warlock gate out of the wind storm.  There were several times I just did it with some well-timed Rolls, though.  It was cool to have four quite different phases in that fight.

Twin Consorts and the Anti-Climax

Twin Consorts down in 25man!

Take that as you will in its purposeful double meanings.  After all of the… commentary… over the Twins and their “place” in Throne of Thunder, they went splat with a disappointing quickness.

Thunderstruck by the Thunder King

Lei Shen, however, is not disappointing.  He is proving to be just what an end boss should be, many phases and many mechanics… and when things go bad – MANY ADDS!  Unfortunately, this means that he is a nightmare as an LFR boss.  I think a mechanic or two could still use some tweaking, or even removal.  But on normal, he is perfect, and though he is not dead yet (Sunday was our first full night of work on him), I do not think it will be too much longer and when he dies, it will be a great accomplishment for my guildies and me.

~Effy

SotR: Snakes in a Raid

Sneaky lil buggers…

The last week of Tier 14, I raided on my Monk.  It gave me a chance beyond LFR to finally test whether all my hard work would prove fruitful.  With the Monk healing style, and my former incarnation as a Resto Shaman, the idea of healing a 25man raid was daunting.  I can blanket a 5man or a 10man with Renewing Mist without too much difficulty.  But would its target limit severely gimp me with the other 15 or so people it would NOT hit?

This and many other questions plagued me.

The biggest of those “other questions” being: How gimp am I going to heal while still in a few blues against my guildie healers who are all starting to get Heroic gear?

Luckily, they were all fights I was familiar with on my Shaman.  I might not know them on my Monk, but I did know where and when pushing myself would be needed and where I could sit back and topoff.

And I held my own.  And I stayed alive on Heroic bosses.

Our last week of Tier 14 was a positive one for me.

Fast forward another week to patch 5.2, and the introduction of the Isle of Thunder and the Throne of Thunder…

I’m doing dailies, really

I am currently 7 for 7 on doing Isle of Thunder dailies with my Monk.  🙂  This is partly thank Finalflame for, as he and I have been keeping each other going with these, even when we really don’t want to.

And no, I do not pet battle while I am grouped.  😛  I save that for my other toons doing dailies.

BTW, the Isle of Thunder dailies are great for dual-boxing – no collection quests!  I love it!

Oh, sorry.  Raiding post.  Raiding post.  Focus.

First Impressions

A first look at Jin’Rokh

I really wish I would have taken this screenshot a few seconds before, when Jin’Rokh first came into view and and started flailing around and conjuring lightning to try and impress us all.  Okie, probably to scare us all.  But I was impressed.  And I was momentarily captivated away from my PrintScreen button.  Darn you, Jin’Rokh.

Let me first say: I read and watched strats for four boss encounters before raiding this week.  As soon as I was done, I think my head exploded.  Four strats at once was a lot to take in, especially for someone who knows she will not retain it once I walk into the room.  That was a lot of mechanics to keep straight.  Thank goodness for second monitor, and pre-pull reminders.

As usual, a pull or two and I was good and settled into my dancing and healing rotations.

JinRokh came to us fairly easily.  The only real important factor is puddles AKA when to stand in them and when not to.  Oh, and what stuff to run away from.

I was not impressed with my healing output, but my gear still sucks.  And in my defense, I LITERALLY ran Terrace of Endless Spring SEVEN times this week trying to replace my last few blues.  The Elder Charms from the treasure trove scenario were great – if only they actually amounted to shoulders.  I suppose I cannot complain too much – Ireenia got her Sha-touched staff, Jin’ya, and her Spirits of the Sun Trinket.

I am still so undergeared.  <cry>

Horridon Trash Aside

So I am not sure how I missed taking any screenshots of the trash between Jin’Rokh and Horridon…  Oh yah!  I was too busy dying to snakes, stacking healing debuffs and being punted to my death by wind plus invulnerable spirit trolls!  <blink>

It was like fighting Ultraxion trash with ridiculous damage and debuffs while on an elevator while Lei Shi is having a tantrum.  Yah…  Oh, yah, plus stealthy snakes.

I truly believe this is Blizzard’s big middle finger to everyone who has ever complained about anything.  😛

This past week, it was scary and amusing.  I imagine in another few weeks it will just be ridiculously obnoxious.  Oh, and I cannot WAIT to see this in LFR this week.  /sarcasm

Horridon

Horridon is a super cool looking, giant blue and purple triceratops!

His fight has a crapload of mechanics to pay attention to.  Basically, we learned what the basic mechanics of all troll triceratops are – double-swipe and charge.  This actually helped me later in the week with rares and the scenario that opened the second part of the Isle!

The biggest two things to remember with triceratops fights:

1. They are dragons AKA never stand in front or behind them.
2. Sidestep/strafe the charge to win!

So apparently fighting a gigantic dinosaur is not enough, and there need to be hordes of trolls to deal with as well.  More specifically, four tribes of trolls.  Oh, and each of those troll tribes have different annoying mechanics – quicksand, stacking poison debuffs, swirling frost orbs of death, and warbears, respectively.  Of course.

I had no real difficulty settling into my heals here either, once the majority of the mechanics that affected me and where spikes in damage would land were identified.

Horridon counted for the remainder of our Wednesday night raid.

Ironically, Thursday night – we one shot him!

The Elder Council

The rest of Thursday’s night’s raid was learning the mechanics of the Council of Elders fight.  If I had previously thought Horridon had a lot of separate mechanics to manage during the encounter… it was NOTHING compared to this fight!

This fight is a council of four trolls.  Each of the trolls have their own abilities they cast throughout the fight.  Also, none of the health pools are shared as we have grown accustomed to with fights like Omnotron and Stone Guardians.  Its more like good ol’ Karazhan and the Moroes fight.  (Which, sadly, I never saw as current content, but I bet it was epic.)  The main difference was that killing them fairly evenly was necessary.

To add an interesting kink to this fight, we see the return of a troll we might fondly remember from Mogu’Shan Vaults – Gara’jal!  (He did say he would be back!)  He appears in spirit form, and spends the fight possessing each of the four council members one at a time.  While possessed, the council members have DIFFERENT abilities, similar to but different from those they have throughout the fight.  Doing 25% of their damage to them is what it takes to kick Gara’jal out of his current host.  It is pretty imperative to do this quickly, as the council members gain a dark energy the longer they are possessed.  If their energy reaches 100, they begin to do massive amounts of damage to the whole raid.  Ouchy.

This fight, I tested out my single-target healing ability.  I was actually pretty impressed.  I was able to keep Ranico up through a lot, with the occasional help of a tank cooldown for when he was stunned.

The council counted for the remainder of our Thursday night raid.

Ironically, Sunday night – we one shot them!  (Am I seeing a strange pattern here?)

Tortos

Tortos is a giant stone turtle.  (And he’s BLUE!  “I have a turtle, he’s blue!”)  He appears to be stuck in the wall, which makes him a little ornery.  He gets even more ornery if no one is in bite and clobber range.  hehe

Ouchy

It took a few attempts to get the spinning turtles under control and to correctly time punting them at Tortos to interrupt his raid-wipe mechanic – Furious Stone Breath.  (Yah, that was one-shotting me!)  But once that was under control, the attempts progressed quickly to a kill.

There were not a ridiculous amount of mechanics to this fight, but personally, I found this fight most frustrating.  There is a lot of stuff to move out of – spinning turtles and falling pieces of ceiling, mainly – which makes it necessary to not only watch your feet, but also watch throughout the room.  The spinning turtles tend to move around the room very erratically.

As a Monk, the majority of my single-target healing is focused around my Soothing Mist, which is channeled.  This already makes movement more complicated than I am used to.  Add on top of that, it also jerks the positioning of my screen around when my target is moving or when I change targets to someone standing in a different spot.  I found it HUGELY disorienting in this fight, and it caused me a great deal of headache and also resulted in my largest number of deaths on any of our bosses.  😦

But Sunday night, Tortos went down and made for an exciting end to our first raid week in Throne of Thunder!

~ Effy

And now for kill shots!  Undying Resolution downed FOUR bosses in the first week of Throne of Thunder!!  Awesome job, everyone!

Wednesday – Jin’Rokh down!

Thursday – Horridon down!

Sunday – Council down!

Sunday – Tortos down!

SotR: Reflecting on Raiding

I have a bad feeling about this.

Wednesday night was interesting, getting onto my Shaman for real for the first time in about a week (AKA last Thursday, when I last raided).  Of course, there were other times that I logged her on over the week, mostly to ferry around my Monk.

BTW, total aside here, two-person mounts have just about been negated in their usefulness by CRZ.  I spent more time refinding my toons (yay for phasing on top of it!) and remounting my Monk on the back of the rocket than I did actually flying.  Because every time I entered a new zone, it would kick Ireenia off my rocket, to oh-so slowly parachute her to the ground, where I would have to turn around, land, and commence searching.  I might just have to go back to my previous way – both on separate flying mounts and liberal use of the /follow command.  Of course, that always has its problems too.  Namely, toons with different flight speeds.

Geez, Blizzard, accommodate my altoholicism and need for two accounts and playing both simultaneously!  😛

Anyway…

This Week in 25man

Wednesday night was a quick clear of Terrace (just Lei Shi and Sha of Fear, as there was a preclear of the other two encounters Tuesday night).  Then, we headed over to Mogu’Shan Vaults for some heroics.

Heroics are awesome.  But there seems to be a general air of disappointment over MSV heroic loot.  C’mon now – it’s HEROIC!  But I guess since it is really not better than Terrace normal, there is a disconnect here.  Why was there a need to present multiple levels of iLevel in one Tier?  I realize Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring were released later.  But staggering the iLevels so as to make MSV heroic loot so meh just does not make much sense.

Anyway, I digress again.

We once more killed Stone Guardians, which is finally starting to feel like a farm fight.  We also downed Feng again, which is still feeling very progressive.  After our break at 9:45 or so, we worked on Gara’jal.

When he started explaining the fight, Z first commented something about what a cluster the fight would be and OMG enrage timers.  Well, yah, the first few attempts were messy – it was our 25man’s first time in front of the boss.  And yah, we hit the enrage timer a few times.  Calling both DPS and healers to go into the spirit world for 25 people over Vent was a tad chaotic.  Luckily, the healing team got ourselves coordinated better, and we stopped missing having a healer in for each totem.

Once that happened – BAM!  Dead boss!

Last night, we returned to MSV, and worked on Elegon on heroic.  They added a very interesting mechanic or two to the heroic version.

1. There is a break in LoS between the platform (starry form) and the outside ring (non-starry form)
2. The Celestial Protectors have the ability to one shot the entire raid!  Basically, three DPS and a tank have to soak the damage of Total Annihilation outside the starry form platform to avoid this.  Also, if someone without a cooldown steps onto the outside, yah, one shot.  So no clearing stacks during Total Annihilation!

No kill on Elegon yet, but we hit the final phase (and the enrage) a few times.  Lots of DPS checks this tier, I am noticing.  It is more enrages that slow our progression than anything else.

So yes, we are now 3/16 in heroics for the tier.  And this is all pre-nerfing!  And pre-5.2!  Hooray!  😀

My Performance

Have I mentioned I really really hate heights? ><

At first, being on my Shaman felt awkward – I have been Monk healing lowbie dungeons for a week.  The Monk skillset is totally different than other healers.  There is no little-slow/big-slow/fast trifecta of heals.  It is truly a different feeling way to heal.

But quickly I got into my groove, and as usual, I got into my comfortable happy place of healing.

Even against two Pandaren Resto Shaman, I felt I did well.

I even made a small change that seems to be working really well for heroics, at least when there is some stacking involved.  Vixsin wrote a great post over at Life in Group 5 about some Resto Shaman “Best Practices”.  It is a great post, and I recommend it to anyone who is Shaman healing this tier.  In fact, I always recommend Vixsin, because she has great info every tier.  🙂

The biggest tip that was a “Whoa, I did not know that!” for me was #2 – using Unleash Life right before Healing Rain.  This is huge!  I cannot explain how huge.  It actually encouraged me to use Healing Rain last night – a lot.  And it was noticeable.

Some of the other things I already practice regularly – HST on cooldown, Chain Heal on Riptide targets, and 100% uptime on Earth Shield (I try and make a habit of recasting it at about 3 charges remaining).

The others are things I try to do, but it does not always work out that way – not overwriting Riptides, Ascendance or HST with SLT, and healing the Unleashed Fury target.

As one in a large healing team in a 25man raid setting, I rarely pair healing cooldowns.  Sure, there are situations that require it, but they are far fewer when you have 6-7 healers.  It is more often that we pair two healers with one cooldown each, in that case.  So I try and spread my cooldowns out along the fight, especially for when that unexpected “oh crap” moment hits, and you are trying to prevent deaths or salvage an attempt before too many people die.

Riptide and Unleash Elements with Unleashed Fury are things I usually use on tanks.  But even tanks have healing lulls.  And sometimes we only have two tanks for a fight, or even just one.  I would rather have Riptide rolling on the tank(s) regularly than to try and fight to have exactly three rolling at all times.  Ideally, yes, but in reality, there are sometimes bigger priorities.

I do not claim 100% efficiency as a healer.  I aim for it, certainly, but I am not going to lie and say “OMG, I totally always do everything exactly perfect, and to be a good healer so should you.”  I certainly never said I was an infallible healer.  🙂

Reflecting

I know this is going to be a hard transition for me.  I have been raid healing on my Shaman for about three years now, and it has always been her first and foremost in my WoW raiding.  There have been times where I did not raid, or times where I alt-healed on other toons.  But my Shaman has always been my raider.

I started in ICC, in 25man PUGs and 10man raid teams.  I remember killing Lich King, and that is still one of my biggest gaming accomplishments and sources of pride.  There was not a great deal of “raiding” in my past gaming, and it was my first time killing an endgame boss.

I got comfortable, and then Cataclysm was a big eye opener.  I remember the start of Cata, and people saying it would weed out all the Wrath-babies.  Well, I am a Wrath-baby.  I do not mind admitting it.  ICC was no faceroll.  Yah, once I had epics, heroic dungeons really were, but not raiding.  Yah, healing was different.  It was Chain Heal all the things for Shaman, but I still excelled at what I did.  I watched other Shaman go OOM halfway through fights and sporting twice the overheals I had.  I still gauge myself more in that way than HPS numbers.

Cata made me learn my Shaman all over again.  It was not about pushing out huge heal numbers – it was impossible at the beginning of the expansion.  The only way I could manage myself was with Healing Wave as my primary go-to heal, and it seemed like three times the damage it healed went out in the time it took to cast.  But Shaman got stronger through the expansion, and by Dragon Soul, we were healing gold.  I still swear that Dragon Soul was built around Resto Shaman toolkit.

Mists of Pandaria has been a whole different learning experience.  It is somewhere between Wrath and Cata as a Resto Shaman – it is not lol-spam-AoE-heals nor is it a harsh triage setting where you dangle all of your party members over the abyss with minimal hit points while praying no one steps in something or misses an interrupt.  Our totems have changed, and though I miss having their comforting presence always around me, I think it was good for our quality of life.  They feel more like choices and less like the one situation I vividly recall, where Effy found herself kicked from a dungeon because she spent two trash pulls with no totems down.  (lolwut)

But with knowledge, I grow comfortable.  And at some point, I think Effy and I grew too comfortable.  I am still learning, sure.  The Unleash Elements+Healing Rain trick is one example.  But at the same time, I am feeling like I did at the end of Cata, where Effy maintains herself, and has few upgrade prospects at the moment.

So, in many ways, I am looking forward to a change.  Even the totem change is not equal to a change in healer classes.  Especially the vastly different Mistweaver Monks.  I am looking forward to seeing raiding through a different pair of eyes (though, still from the same role).  I am looking forward to once more being on that edge where I am learning and growing as a healer more than healing on instinct and habit.

I cast a now-commonplace Earth Shield on Ranico Wednesday night and had a melancholy thought that accompanied it.  I whispered him my thought, “I am going to miss ES’ing you.”

Instead, I will be casting Life Cocoon or Revival or Uplift on him in times of need, and healing him alongside my Jade Serpent Statue – a thought that is still one fraught with annoyance at its Shaman-like qualities.  But the Serpent and I are coming to an understanding.

Ireenia is Level 87.  It won’t be too much longer…

~ Effy

And here are our most recent Heroic kills!  Feng and Gara’jal!

Heroic Feng down in 25man!

Heroic Gara’jal down in 25man!

BTW, for anyone reading this via a blog reader, I updated my theme and added a header!  Now with more dragons!

Undying Resolution is Recruiting!

Undying Resolution is a progression focused 25man team on a lighter, two day per week schedule.  We raid Wednesday and Thursday nights from 8pm to 11pm Eastern time on the Alliance side of Elune.  Currently, our 25man team is 16/16 in Normal Tier 14 and 1/16 in Heroic.

We are looking for more progression-minded applicants in the areas of healers and ranged DPS.

Healers:

• Restoration Druid
• Mistweaver Monk

Ranged DPS:

• Warlocks
• Mages

Other serious and exceptional raiders of any class/spec are always welcome and encouraged to apply.

Please put in an application on the forums of the Undying Resolution website!

You are also welcome to contact me directly here in the comments, through Twitter @Effraeti, by email at effraeti@gmail.com, or in-game Effraeti#1609.  I would be happy to answer any questions about who we are and what we work to accomplish.

~ Effy

SotR: Amber-Shaper Un’sok

Before ever installing WoW, I had been a healer for a long time.  The single biggest difference coming to WoW was raiding.  I had RvR’d in Dark Age of Camelot (large-scale, 3-sided, realm versus realm PvP which I desperately miss) and I had also done the open-instance raids and dungeons it employed, as well as 5man instanced dungeons.  These were a great precursor, but did not really prepare me for the WoW-style of raiding.

I love raiding in WoW.

Let me edit that: I love raid healing in WoW.

One thing I have come to learn over the past three or so years, since late Wrath, is that a lot is expected from healers.  Large damage phases.  Healing while moving out of fire/void zones/tornadoes/bad.  Spike damage.  Cleansing.  Healing amongst being feared/stunned/MC’d.  NOT healing at certain points.  NOT cleansing at certain points.  Managing cooldowns, either on my own or per callouts.

Above all – not panicking.  🙂

One thing I have come to know is even though much is expected of me, certain mechanics do NOT effect healers.  Up to this point, the most incapacitating mechanic I have dealt with to interrupt the flow of my healing is mind control.  And in previous expansions. this was usually only if I personally did something to screw up (ie. Blood Queen).

Mists of Pandaria has kind of set that standard on its ear – most specifically with the Amber-Shaper Un’sok fight.

I am not complaining, really.  I just found this to be a most jarring surprise.

On Ultraxion, as a healer I was immune to his Fading Light.  On Putricide, I never had to learn how to function the Abomination (but at least that one was a choice, except for those working toward Shadowmourne).  On the Blood Queen fight, I only had to get bitten if I REALLY wanted to and wanted the other half of my achievement.  All those were healer exempt, as well as many other mechanics I cannot recall at this exact second.

Un’sok, on the other hand, his Mutated Constructs affect everyone.

In all of my LFR runs, I have never been pulled into a construct.  So when watching the video for the fight before trying it with our 10man, my stomach did a tiny flip-flop.  I had an “Oh eff” moment.  I was totally unprepared.

I am horrible at vehicles.  I have STILL not mastered the drakes in the Malygos fight.  Quests with vehicles are usually those most annoying to me.

Holy crap.  What a rude awakening for a healer.

Holy crap.  What a nightmare logistically for a 25man raid!

I have noticed a trend with the Tier 14 dungeons, and that is breaking all the bounds of our previous comfort zones.  For me, first off and as a Resto Shaman, is the utter lack of stacking – a total 360 from Dragon Soul (my Spirit Link Totem feels so ignored!).  The tornadoes on Bladelord are a good example.  Attenuation on the Vizier is another.  The entire raid mechanic revolving around Garalon is certainly high on that list.  Fracturing the raid in the Sha of Fear fight.  A constant theme of splitting DPS is another oddity I have noticed.

So let me give the tiny bit of advice that helped me through through the Amber-Shaper fight…  (And even then I tunnel-visioned and forgot to eat off the floor in Phase 3.)  A quick how-to on managing the Mutated Construct:

Smash the ever-loving crap out of Button 1, and hit Button 2 AFTER the DBM countdown ends, to interrupt Amber Explosion.  Using the Construct was compared to beating down Wild Crops on your farm, and that comparison helped me a lot.

Yes, there are two other buttons – 3 and 4.

Button 4 is only to be used in Phase 2, while the giant Amber Monstrosity is up.  You use it once your health drops below 20% to leave the Construct.  (Tanks use it in Phase 1, where they are the only ones who get put into the Mutated Construct.)

Button 3 is only to be used in Phase 3, after the giant Amber Monstrosity is dead.  In Phase 3, you want to stay in the Construct for the remainder of the fight.  So use Button 3 to slurp up bright yellow goo from the floor to maintain your Willpower.  Willpower is what allows you to use your abilities.  Eating the goo also heals you.  So eat to live!

I know operating the Mutated Construct has a bit of a learning curve.  I am still working on it myself.  So these are just some more thoughts to help others along.

~ Effy

Note: For an actual guide to the Amber-Shaper Un’sok fight, as opposed to this opinion-laden editorial version, see here.

Completely off-topic aside brought about by thinking of Dark Age of Camelot: There I played Midgard, which was blue.  Here, I play Alliance, which is blue.  My favorite color is blue.  Coincidence?  Hmm.

Here are some kill shots from the past week!  Yay!  The Queen is our last remaining boss for Normal 25man!

Sha of Fear down 25man

Amber-Shaper Un’sok down 25man

SotR: Sha of Fear 25

Or as I prefer to refer to him – the Sha of Ooh Pretty Colors!

WARNING: This post might be a little soapboxy.

It is a new year, and therefore I figured a slight adjustment to my raiding updates was in order.  Basically, the numbers were starting to get cumbersome, so I scratched that.  Also I decided to use a fancy acronym instead of the full State of the Raider.  😀

I also want to leave myself some room to breath.  I was starting to get a bit overwhelmed with pressuring myself to post an update every week.  I think that was why my posts fizzled out before the end of the year.  So I will try and post only when I actually have something interesting to say.

Or maybe just interesting to me?  Who knows?  🙂

Catch-up

First of all, let me catch-up to where Undying Resolution is right now.

Our 25man has Mogu’shan Vaults clear and on farm.  Heart of Fear is up to Amber-Shaper.  Terrace of Endless Spring is just up to Sha of Fear.

Our 10man recently cleared the all of the normal mode bosses for Tier 14.

Talk is for starting heroic modes in the 10man group soon.  This would mean Mogu’shan Vaults would be dropping from our 25man raids.

Sha of Fear

When I did this fight in LFR, I was ambivalent.  It was an okie fight.  The cone thingie everyone wants to stay inside was a mechanic worth paying attention to.  There was a meh amount of incoming damage.  Oh, something to dispell.  Blah, back to kinda healing.

Then, one day – randomly and for the first time in my several Terrace LFR’s – I was whisked away from Sha and teleported to a gazebo with a tank and three DPS.  It was a little faux 5man!  There was a boss, and we were far enough removed from the rest of the raid that it was us on our own.

It was so cool and different!

In LFR, this has only happened to me once.  😦  Boo.  (Random mechanic is random?  Wha?)

When our 25man got down Lei Shi in one shot this past Thursday (woot!), I was quite curious to see this fight in normal.

The Sha of Fear did not disappoint me.

I love this fight!

The more that I think about it, the more I think Challenge Modes prepared me for this fight.  Relying on myself to heal.  Relying my “group members” to do their part.  Not being in the standard 25man healer position of blanket healing and feeling that although my mana is dropping and Skada is registering growing digits, my personal, individual heals do not mean a whole lot to every 25 people every second.

In a 5man, I am actually DOING something.  Well, doing something that 100% matters.  Raid healing allows for small lapses in each healer – either to being CC’d or moving or even being dead.  But 5man healing only has one healer to lean on.  5man healing, in its most bleeding-edge sense, requires the coordination of everyone.  It requires you to heal your damnedest but also expect that everyone else is doing their part.

Yah, heroic dungeons these days do not require this kind of focus…  I think Challenge Modes were an interesting compromise, though.

Actually, I have a tangent to share.

Over the weekend, Ranico asked me to do a heroic to finish up our Valor for the week.  (I capped this week!  Yay!)  I asked him his thoughts on something I have been debating for a while, and he agreed it would make things go quicker.  I queued as a healer, and stayed in my Elemental spec.  🙂  Ranico tanked in his DPS gear.  The dungeon was Temple of the Jade Serpent.  It was easy through most of it, Healing Stream Totem FTW, but I know Ranico can do heroics without a healer… I have watched from guild chat.  lol  The Sha fight was intense though!  I was healing and DPS’ing and using cooldowns.  Whoa.  😀

Word of warning, though.  I do not plan to try this without Ranico any time soon.  lol

When I had a tank and a group I trusted (despite the hobbled position Resto Shaman maintained through much of the beginning of the expansion), I LIKED Cataclysm heroic dungeons.  I liked CC’ing things.  I liked everyone paying attention and doing their part.  I liked having to think about them and what spells I was casting.  I liked TRIAGE.

What I do NOT like is people dying and me having no control over it.    One shots make me sad.  But I am still (Yes, still!  I might be a bit of a control freak…) slowly adjusting to the fact that there are some things I cannot heal through.  This is just one of those things I have to accept as a healer.  <grumble>

Admittedly, though, I never liked pugging in the beginning of Cata.

Okie, so the tangent had a tangent.

I have only seen about two-thirds of the fight in 25man normal, but from what I have gathered so far, the biggest deal in healing is on the platforms.  You have no backup, and focus is mandatory.  You also have to grab all the orbs – quickly or they heal the mini-boss.  Grabbing the orbs returns energy/focus/mana/etc. but also causes damage.  So it is also a delicate balance.

Even off the platform, there was usually two groups on platforms, and therefore healing at Sha was intense too.  It was not brutally heavy, but it was done with limited healers, and therefore required more focus.

All in all, the Sha of Fear fight gave me a chance to water dance.

Incoming Shammy confession…

The Sha was perfect for my current healing preferences, which is almost entirely ignoring my AoE heals.  (I know, it is heretical, eh?)  I pepper the raid with Healing Rains and Chain Heals occasionally, but lately it seems my single target heals are more efficient and just more easily placed.  AoE is only draining my mana and skyrocketing my overheals.  In farm fights I use them and oh well about overheals, just so long as I am doing something other than standing around, right?  But for progression, I am finding myself in “Challenge Mode.”  Back to triage mentality.  And honestly, Resto Shaman love triage.  It is in our Mastery.  🙂

I am not sure if everyone else in raid was enjoying it as much as I was, though.  After a few attempts we ended up going to Heart of Fear, and I was a sad Shammy.  😦

Soon.  Soon I will bring him down.

~ Effy

25man Normal Tsulong

25man Normal Lei Shi