I'm just about to a point again now where I'm not overly excited about playing the priest. I guess there's nothing really that's causing it. But, I feel like I have pretty solid gear. Sure, it could use upgrading, but I'd really need to BG to upgrade it easily. Other than that, it's either dungeons, heroics, or Kara. That's what I want to do, run some stuff like that. Thing is, I have to wait til this weekend!!
It's okay though. I don't even know whether I'm geared properly enough to heal a heroic, but I feel like I should be fine. I think I'm a very good healer, and I have a strong enough gearset to back me up in most cases. Sitting at around 1200 +heals and 150 or so MP5. So I'm hoping saturday we have enough people on that we can run heroic ramps or BF or steam vaults or something.
That's about all. I've been playing the rogue waiting for a good chunk of time. Once I do, then maybe I can get a good chance to run some instances, but I think until then, it's alt time! I'll have another 70 in no time. :D That'll be sweet.
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Gruul Down!
So, as I've said time and time again, I'm a very casual player. Sure, I enjoy instancing and BGing and just about everything else the game has to offer, but rarely do I have a solid chunk of 3 hours to devote to playing the game at a time.
Last Night, I was tweaking around on my rogue (63 now), and the wife had gone out, and a guild mate asks me if I wanted to join a raid to go after Gruul. I actually (literally) laughed, not thinking that I would have time and/or stand a chance of healing the raid. After talking to the raid leader, him telling me that there were going to be 5-7 healers (with me included) and that the run (if successful) typically took 45 minutes, I said "Sure, what the hey."
So off we go, in to kill some trash. I'm not having the slightest idea what we're doing. The raid leader tries to explain on Vent, and does a good job of marking. It was another guild organizing it mainly but there were a good number of folks that I knew in the raid group -- a couple of our players had left to join a couple of other guilds, and several others I'd grouped up with. Four of the guys from ours guild were included as well (70 mage, 70 pally tanking, 70 hunter, and myself, the 70 priest). Normally a very solid group, but c'mon. It's Gruul. The rest of the group compisition .. I can't even tell you. There was a lot of ranged DPS, and only 2 other priests.. and one of them was shadow. I figured I had a pretty good shot of getting SOMETHING. (I'll forget later .. my highest "roll" out of about 7 of them was a 25. Not my night)
So anyway, not having a clue what to do, I'm clicking on healbot to heal the tanks where I feel like I need to. The issue is that I'm slow. My heals kept landing a half second after someone else's heal and not healing for anything but a good chunk of overheal. So, I give up on the tanks and start healing the occasional random damage as it pops up. Goes fine, we get to the first set of bosses.
It's 5 "bosses" in a room. A Priest, a Shaman, a Lock, a Mage, and the "main boss." Some king or something. (I'll look up more detail later I'm sure) We've got our guild pally tanking the priest because he doesn't hit very hard. A few people interrupting the priest, and I'm assigned "Raid Healing, and help out with the mage tanking the mage." Yep, that's right, mage tank. Some wierd trick where the mage spell-steals the mage boss's spellshield that absorbs something like 70% of spell damage, makes the mage an ideal tank. Yeah ok sure.
Well, we wiped a couple of times, but on the third try, blew through. I was third of 5 on the healing charts after that because of the AOE damage I was healing -- most of my heals landed good and solid and healed for their full amount, or close.
So anyway, I didn't get any drops, but our tank and our mage both did, so they ported out to shatt to get their new gear, got summoned back, and headed on our way. BTW, this is about an hour and a half after we'd started that we headed on in to Gruul.
Some overeager shammy pulled him accidentally and that led to another wipe. We got him down to 50% that fight though so at least the group got a pretty good idea of what the fight was like. I got killed pretty early because of the stone shatter thing he does. He basically turns everyone in the raid into an AOE bomb, and if you're near anyone (specially 5 of your group members), you take like 2k damage from everyone you're near. I have 7.5k health. Let's see, 2k * 5 > 7.5k. Yeah, painful.
Anyway, second time around, tanks pulled him and all the groups got into position. Everytime we got "stoned" i got a shield up on myself for that extra 2k or so health boost which helped drastically -- as did not standing near 5 group members, I got far enough away from most of the others that I didn't take their damage as well as mine. ALMOST died the first time but after that, everyone sorta got their position down. Sorta a shame that he tosses you randomly into the air before turning you to a bomb, so it takes a bit to reposition. ANYWAY.
Everytime the raid took AOE damage I took to healing them up, helping on the tank when there wasn't anyone else low -- I got into the mode of stopcasting -- you cast a heal, and before it "finishes", if the tank isn't down on health, you "stop" the cast and immediately begin re-castin. You can do this by jumping, moving, or whatever.. or you can macro it in. I've got it macro'd into my downranked GHeal (rank 2) and my main GHeal, so I just stand there clicking on the tank on healbot -- when the heal's about done, I click on him again to cancel, or let it go if he needs a heal. That worked out MUCH better for me than my "click on him when he needs it" approach.
So, we down'ed Gruul on that second attempt. Wicked. Pretty decent gear, I got an epic neck piece that actually had less heal than my previous piece, but a lot more MP5. The Teeth of Gruul! The hunter in our group got an epic leather piece too -- it was an upgrade in stats, but still only leather. So anyway, good times! I didn't think I'd ever SEE Gruul, much less be involved in taking him down. And I feel like I was partially "carried" due to the rest of the group, but I was #2 of 7 healers in that fight against gruul -- JUST behind the lead healer.. I was almost TOP of the healing charts. Which feels excellent to me since I'd never done the fight, never raid healed, and I'm NOT epic geared (much) at all. I had something like 1200 +heal and 175 mp5 casting during the fight. So anyway. Sweeeet. That's my story.
May give it a shot again sometime to see if I can win s'more gear out of the deal. And, it did take us close to 3 hours (which made the wife less than happy) but that's mostly because of the wipes. I think if I got in a solid group that could 1 or 2-shot the bosses then it would go a lot quicker. 45 minutes is probably pushing it, but an hour and a half or so shouldn't be unreasonable. It's a very short instance, other than the 15 minute long fights. hehe.
Last Night, I was tweaking around on my rogue (63 now), and the wife had gone out, and a guild mate asks me if I wanted to join a raid to go after Gruul. I actually (literally) laughed, not thinking that I would have time and/or stand a chance of healing the raid. After talking to the raid leader, him telling me that there were going to be 5-7 healers (with me included) and that the run (if successful) typically took 45 minutes, I said "Sure, what the hey."
So off we go, in to kill some trash. I'm not having the slightest idea what we're doing. The raid leader tries to explain on Vent, and does a good job of marking. It was another guild organizing it mainly but there were a good number of folks that I knew in the raid group -- a couple of our players had left to join a couple of other guilds, and several others I'd grouped up with. Four of the guys from ours guild were included as well (70 mage, 70 pally tanking, 70 hunter, and myself, the 70 priest). Normally a very solid group, but c'mon. It's Gruul. The rest of the group compisition .. I can't even tell you. There was a lot of ranged DPS, and only 2 other priests.. and one of them was shadow. I figured I had a pretty good shot of getting SOMETHING. (I'll forget later .. my highest "roll" out of about 7 of them was a 25. Not my night)
So anyway, not having a clue what to do, I'm clicking on healbot to heal the tanks where I feel like I need to. The issue is that I'm slow. My heals kept landing a half second after someone else's heal and not healing for anything but a good chunk of overheal. So, I give up on the tanks and start healing the occasional random damage as it pops up. Goes fine, we get to the first set of bosses.
It's 5 "bosses" in a room. A Priest, a Shaman, a Lock, a Mage, and the "main boss." Some king or something. (I'll look up more detail later I'm sure) We've got our guild pally tanking the priest because he doesn't hit very hard. A few people interrupting the priest, and I'm assigned "Raid Healing, and help out with the mage tanking the mage." Yep, that's right, mage tank. Some wierd trick where the mage spell-steals the mage boss's spellshield that absorbs something like 70% of spell damage, makes the mage an ideal tank. Yeah ok sure.
Well, we wiped a couple of times, but on the third try, blew through. I was third of 5 on the healing charts after that because of the AOE damage I was healing -- most of my heals landed good and solid and healed for their full amount, or close.
So anyway, I didn't get any drops, but our tank and our mage both did, so they ported out to shatt to get their new gear, got summoned back, and headed on our way. BTW, this is about an hour and a half after we'd started that we headed on in to Gruul.
Some overeager shammy pulled him accidentally and that led to another wipe. We got him down to 50% that fight though so at least the group got a pretty good idea of what the fight was like. I got killed pretty early because of the stone shatter thing he does. He basically turns everyone in the raid into an AOE bomb, and if you're near anyone (specially 5 of your group members), you take like 2k damage from everyone you're near. I have 7.5k health. Let's see, 2k * 5 > 7.5k. Yeah, painful.
Anyway, second time around, tanks pulled him and all the groups got into position. Everytime we got "stoned" i got a shield up on myself for that extra 2k or so health boost which helped drastically -- as did not standing near 5 group members, I got far enough away from most of the others that I didn't take their damage as well as mine. ALMOST died the first time but after that, everyone sorta got their position down. Sorta a shame that he tosses you randomly into the air before turning you to a bomb, so it takes a bit to reposition. ANYWAY.
Everytime the raid took AOE damage I took to healing them up, helping on the tank when there wasn't anyone else low -- I got into the mode of stopcasting -- you cast a heal, and before it "finishes", if the tank isn't down on health, you "stop" the cast and immediately begin re-castin. You can do this by jumping, moving, or whatever.. or you can macro it in. I've got it macro'd into my downranked GHeal (rank 2) and my main GHeal, so I just stand there clicking on the tank on healbot -- when the heal's about done, I click on him again to cancel, or let it go if he needs a heal. That worked out MUCH better for me than my "click on him when he needs it" approach.
So, we down'ed Gruul on that second attempt. Wicked. Pretty decent gear, I got an epic neck piece that actually had less heal than my previous piece, but a lot more MP5. The Teeth of Gruul! The hunter in our group got an epic leather piece too -- it was an upgrade in stats, but still only leather. So anyway, good times! I didn't think I'd ever SEE Gruul, much less be involved in taking him down. And I feel like I was partially "carried" due to the rest of the group, but I was #2 of 7 healers in that fight against gruul -- JUST behind the lead healer.. I was almost TOP of the healing charts. Which feels excellent to me since I'd never done the fight, never raid healed, and I'm NOT epic geared (much) at all. I had something like 1200 +heal and 175 mp5 casting during the fight. So anyway. Sweeeet. That's my story.
May give it a shot again sometime to see if I can win s'more gear out of the deal. And, it did take us close to 3 hours (which made the wife less than happy) but that's mostly because of the wipes. I think if I got in a solid group that could 1 or 2-shot the bosses then it would go a lot quicker. 45 minutes is probably pushing it, but an hour and a half or so shouldn't be unreasonable. It's a very short instance, other than the 15 minute long fights. hehe.
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Holy, Continued
Eesh, so it’s been a while since I’ve putten anything to paper. Or digital media, or whatever. I’ve been a busy little priest, in the hour or so here and there that I get to play. I’m still specced holy (and loving it). I did suck it up and drop Spirit Tap to spec into the normal 23/38 Raid Healing spec. Improved Divine Spirit is nice, and keeps my MP5 up a bit higher while I’m casting as well as why I’m not with Meditation thrown in there. So it works out. I can still grind pretty much non-stop using my shadowfiend when he becomes available. There’s some wand action thrown in and it’s a bit slower (because my damage is pretty lacking) but I don’t die. Which, in it’s own way, keeps the speed up.
We’ve done a few runs through some of the instances, but most of them have been the easier, LOWER than 70 ones. We did run Shattered Halls the other day. It was pretty impressive, none of us had ever run it before, and we did wipe twice, but we managed to clear it without any real difficulty. We wiped one time when we pulled one group, got feared into another group, and then before we could take them out, a pat came up and aggro’d to me (our healer). By this time, I was throwing a lot of healing out and so our pally tank had a bit of difficulty keeping the pat off of me, and as such, I bit the dust. Kicked the bucket. Etc.
The second time was on the last boss. He has some weird “aoe” type attack that deals 1200-2200 damage to everyone in the party a few times (every 30 seconds, I think) and then there are a bunch of adds too. Anyway, the mage and I died about 30 seconds into the fight the first time. The remaining 3 (Pally Tank, Pally and Warrior DPS) managed to get the boss down to about 35% without a healer.. I got prayer of mending and renew on each of them in SoR, which helped at first. The pally DPS dropped back and dropped some heals, but he ran OOM pretty quick. At least they stayed alive long enough that we got a pretty good taste for the fight though. So we took him down the next time. When the boss started doing his AOE thing, I got a shield up on myself, and a renew on the mage, and dropped out a prayer of mending. Between all that, none of us died, and a quick prayer of healing afterwards topped us back up enough. He did that 2 more times in the fight but it wasn’t too bad after learning how to deal with it. I went a little overboard the first time, actually and so held back a little the second time. Yeah, his attacks were stronger that time and so the mage almost died. He did kick the bucket the third time, actually. Got crit for like 3.6. Anyway! Good times.
That brings me to another point. I <3 pally tank. I’ve run with a good warrior tank before as well and I liked him too, but he was totally epicced out. Our “MT” is a pally and he can hold agro from large groups with little difficulty. His Def. rating is up around 490 and he’s got over 10k health buffed, and I don’t really have much trouble keeping him alive unless the group he’s holding is either really tough, or there’s a boss mixed in. We did, however, have some issues with getting feared during shattered halls the other day though, and I dunno if a warrior tank would be able to handle that any better or not.
Let’s see, as to my gear. I’m up to 3 epics now, and some good sweet blues. I’m still running some +spelldamage blues from the shadow days, but I’m hoping to have those replaced soon. I so wish I could get my cenarion rep the rest of the way up to revered so I could buy the blue healing hood from the quartermaster there. But, I’ve managed to get 2 pieces (belt and shoulders) of the primal mooncloth set. I put the lower level +heal Aldor shoulder inscription on the shoulders. I’ve gotten Pants of the Naaru +77 heals and some mp5) and embroidered them with Silver Spellthread (something like 43 or so more +heals). I got the epiccy BG bracers with +53 or so heal, and enchanted those with +30 (or is it +20?) heal. So I’m sitting at around 1090 +healing and 128 or so mp5 casting. Next on the list is the Cenarion Rep Hood (with the Honor Hold Rep +Heals piece) and the RING from the BG’s. I’m really praying for the Serpentcrest Life Staff drop from Steam Vaults (that I’m going to have to run at least twice anyway to get my Cenarion Rep up.) That’s another +227 healing. I’m wielding either a +85 dmg/heal staff or a +95 heal dagger (with no offhand yet) depending on the situation. I will probably stick with the staff, it has better stats.
I got a couple of healing pieces from some of the instances we ran too on my back and feet and hands. They can be upgraded, but they are suitable for now. Also the +55 heal neck piece is wicked. J
So anyway. It’s coming along. Slowly but surely.
We’ve done a few runs through some of the instances, but most of them have been the easier, LOWER than 70 ones. We did run Shattered Halls the other day. It was pretty impressive, none of us had ever run it before, and we did wipe twice, but we managed to clear it without any real difficulty. We wiped one time when we pulled one group, got feared into another group, and then before we could take them out, a pat came up and aggro’d to me (our healer). By this time, I was throwing a lot of healing out and so our pally tank had a bit of difficulty keeping the pat off of me, and as such, I bit the dust. Kicked the bucket. Etc.
The second time was on the last boss. He has some weird “aoe” type attack that deals 1200-2200 damage to everyone in the party a few times (every 30 seconds, I think) and then there are a bunch of adds too. Anyway, the mage and I died about 30 seconds into the fight the first time. The remaining 3 (Pally Tank, Pally and Warrior DPS) managed to get the boss down to about 35% without a healer.. I got prayer of mending and renew on each of them in SoR, which helped at first. The pally DPS dropped back and dropped some heals, but he ran OOM pretty quick. At least they stayed alive long enough that we got a pretty good taste for the fight though. So we took him down the next time. When the boss started doing his AOE thing, I got a shield up on myself, and a renew on the mage, and dropped out a prayer of mending. Between all that, none of us died, and a quick prayer of healing afterwards topped us back up enough. He did that 2 more times in the fight but it wasn’t too bad after learning how to deal with it. I went a little overboard the first time, actually and so held back a little the second time. Yeah, his attacks were stronger that time and so the mage almost died. He did kick the bucket the third time, actually. Got crit for like 3.6. Anyway! Good times.
That brings me to another point. I <3 pally tank. I’ve run with a good warrior tank before as well and I liked him too, but he was totally epicced out. Our “MT” is a pally and he can hold agro from large groups with little difficulty. His Def. rating is up around 490 and he’s got over 10k health buffed, and I don’t really have much trouble keeping him alive unless the group he’s holding is either really tough, or there’s a boss mixed in. We did, however, have some issues with getting feared during shattered halls the other day though, and I dunno if a warrior tank would be able to handle that any better or not.
Let’s see, as to my gear. I’m up to 3 epics now, and some good sweet blues. I’m still running some +spelldamage blues from the shadow days, but I’m hoping to have those replaced soon. I so wish I could get my cenarion rep the rest of the way up to revered so I could buy the blue healing hood from the quartermaster there. But, I’ve managed to get 2 pieces (belt and shoulders) of the primal mooncloth set. I put the lower level +heal Aldor shoulder inscription on the shoulders. I’ve gotten Pants of the Naaru +77 heals and some mp5) and embroidered them with Silver Spellthread (something like 43 or so more +heals). I got the epiccy BG bracers with +53 or so heal, and enchanted those with +30 (or is it +20?) heal. So I’m sitting at around 1090 +healing and 128 or so mp5 casting. Next on the list is the Cenarion Rep Hood (with the Honor Hold Rep +Heals piece) and the RING from the BG’s. I’m really praying for the Serpentcrest Life Staff drop from Steam Vaults (that I’m going to have to run at least twice anyway to get my Cenarion Rep up.) That’s another +227 healing. I’m wielding either a +85 dmg/heal staff or a +95 heal dagger (with no offhand yet) depending on the situation. I will probably stick with the staff, it has better stats.
I got a couple of healing pieces from some of the instances we ran too on my back and feet and hands. They can be upgraded, but they are suitable for now. Also the +55 heal neck piece is wicked. J
So anyway. It’s coming along. Slowly but surely.
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