Sproutling goes to Kara

It's been a while since we've checked in with my adorable yet impossible to train as a healer sproutling, hasn't it? What has she been up to? Well, we were taking a couple of guildies through Kara (yes, you read that right, Kara) to get them some of the enchants that drop in there. Now the little sproutling has never been to Kara. I wanted to show her how we do it, old school style.

If you were wondering whether the narcolepsy has improved at all, Exhibit A at Moroes' table:

Now the little one did stay awake long enough for me to introduce her to Shade. "This is Shade, my little one, an evil evil man":

Now my addons were being all funky, plus I was distracted by showing the sproutling around. Thus, I think I moved during Flame Wreath. Oops. No one died though. :) Here I am showing the little one how to kick someone when they are down. I know, I know, I'm so mean. But seriously Shade deserves it.

As we were running around in there, I had to introduce the little one to some tough facts of tree life. Specifically the harsh reality that we could be used to make books. Apparently she is not too concerned because she started dancing.

Next, I took her to the chess event, where I think we got confused for a chess piece and someone tried to jump on us and control us.

Finally, I took her to see the big bad man upstairs, Prince. Apparently the little one was not so impressed:

While my little sproutling is dozing away in sleepy land, Jess' Strand Crawler (whose left claw is bigger.. get it? get it?) is at perfect attention, pinching his claws, ready to jump in the fight at any time. /sigh

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If only I could cyclone your ass in RL...

I actually haven't been able to play WOW for a bit. Why? Well I started the process of buying a condo back in July. Long story short, I was supposed to close on this condo in mid to late September, but for a multitude of reasons on the seller and bank's side (including dishonesty, shadyness, and straight-up ineptitude), I still haven't closed. However, I have been kicked out of the place I was renting, thus I've been a wandering vagrant for about a week now. And since my internet connection has been spotty as I crash with friends, I haven't been able to play.

So I am flying back to my hometown, Chapel Hill NC, for the next five days so hopefully I'll be able to play and raid a bit again. Can I just say one thing? The entire real estate world... agents, attorneys, mortgage bankers... um shady? Especially my experience with my mortgage bankers... who are arrogant idiot assholes who weren't smart enough to get a real banking job, a personal sentiment which I have not been shy about sharing with them. Trust me, my feistiness extends its arm long beyond the game. :)

Anyways, hopefully I'll have more game related stuff to blog about again soon.

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Heal like a tank?

I believe that I’ve previously mentioned on this blog that I would categorize myself as a healer with a tank’s mentality. What do I mean when I say I heal like a tank? No, this has nothing to do with healing mechanics or strategy or anything like that. When I say heal like a tank, I’m talking more about having a more aggressive attitude or state of mind, and then consequently acting on it.

Now I recognize that some of this attitude or state of mind will come only with experience and confidence. Also yes, of course I can probably speak my mind a bit more because I run in a close knit guild with folks I’ve run with for a long long time.

On a quick side note, I’m curious as to how many of you have come across asshole healers. Think of the last horrible pug you were in. Who drove you crazy? I’m almost willing to bet it was a dps or tank, but not a healer. If you have come across asshole healers, tell me your stories! (p.s. Left Claw folks not allowed to tell stories)

Anyways, I’m not sure if it stems from this whole stereotype that a lot of the females playing this game tend to be females or that perhaps somehow the role you play in game affects how you act in game, but do you think healers don’t speak up enough? Are we too nice? Do healers quietly just sit in a quiet corner wearing some variation of a sissy robe and just heal?

A couple of suggestions:

1. Speak up:

If you find that a run’s success is often followed by a linking of the damage meters with no mention of healing, take note of how K may act:

Random person:Links damage meters or talks about dps
K: “What because the healers did nothing? Because we were what, just twiddling our thumbs?”

Yeah, yeah, I’m sure it gets annoying sometimes (just ask my guildies), but I don’t know, I just find it important to speak up for all us healers. I think its often easy to place successes on the dps’ doorsteps and failures on the healers'. I’m sure this is even more so in pugs. Don’t let folks forget the awesomeness that is us healers.

2. Participate more:

But on the other side of speaking up, I think its important that us healers take an active part in discussing raid strategy. Make sure you speak up as to what you need as a healer, or how you are seeing the fight from your point of view. It is well known in our guild that all good ideas that Jess suggests in our raids really come from yours truly. Hee hee, just kidding. Jess has some good ideas from time to time. :)

3. Apologize less:

This is something that even I still fail to do at times. Even if a naughty dps grabs aggro and gets one shot, I still sometimes find myself trying to save them, then apologizing if I can’t. Realize that we are healers, not miracle workers, so don’t apologize for someone else’s mistake... we can’t be expected to keep everyone up no matter what.

I think next time something like this happens, I will resist the impulse to apologize and instead /point and /laugh. Ok, ok, maybe I won’t go quite that far. :)

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PVP and Olympics talk

As we like to say in the business:

Booyah!!!

That be a lot of Hordie killin'! Here's K below in the current pvp getup. Though I don't go around pvping chewing gum and blowing bubbles. :)

On a totally different note, everyone here in Chicago is all about the announcement of the 2016 summer Olympics host city, to be announced tomorrow from Copenhagen. Who knows if I will still be living here 7 years from now, but it'd be pretty crazy to be living here in the city when the Olympics are going on! Go Chicago!

Now I remember during the 2008 Beijing Olympics last summer that we got a spirit of competition pet for doing something... a battleground was it? But given how successful WOW's holidays and corresponding achievements have been, Blizz should totally create olympic type competition holidays when the winter or summer olympics are on. For the summer olympics we could totally do a decathlon event... for the winter olympics I'm thinking events like bobsledding and ski jumping. :)

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25 man TOC

Over the last two raid weeks I've participated in a bit of 25 man TOC with two sister guilds we know well, Emerald and Mimik plus a random friend or pug or two. Last week I was lucky enough to pick up Solace of the Defeated which is just an awesome awesome trinket. I <3 it. Now last night we completed the Faction Champion pvp encounter for the first time. Incredibly, not a single one of the 25 folks, nor a single one of the 4 pets died. Everyone was alive at the end! I kinda thought that there should have been an achievement for this.

Anyways, I think I'm getting a bit more used to running 25 mans. I'm not as much "OMG TOO MANY GRID BOXES!!!" as I was before. Though since I'm not running regularly with these folks, its still a bit hard for me to find a non-tank's specific grid box... for example when someone needs heals for incinerate flesh on Jaraxxus. Also on Northrend Beasts encounter, for a second I found myself actually fully hotting up a fellow resto druid, Fiona. Why? Well her little orange grid box was right next to Fonzy, the druid tank's little orange grid box. Two orange grid boxes side by side that started with F! Oopsies.

Some other differences? Well yeah, of course there was a bit of "OMG TOO MANY PEEPS STANDING TOO CLOSE TO ME!!!" in the Jaraxxus encounter. Here's something interesting, we never once discussed healing assignments even the first week we were there. It just kinda worked out. And Jess would be shocked to see how I am in a 25 man, because I keep my mouth shut and don't say a word in vent. Even though a good number of the folks in the raid are folks I know, I don't know, I just keep my mic muted. Maybe its just to keep the illusion up with them that I am actually a sweet, innocent, nice healer! :)

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Too many raids? Good or bad?

Ok, ok so I'll talk about something other than arenas today (though I'm sure I will talk about it again soon). Let's take a quick look at what the Left Claw did last week in terms of raiding.

1. VOA. I don't really remember when we did this, but we did. Doing the three bosses in there is a pretty quick clear.

2. TOC. Another full clear in one night. Now I heard that they nerfed the third pvp style encounter with the patch last Tuesday, but did they also nerf the other encounters? It just seemed so much easier this week! I kept mentioning this in raid chat, and some folks asked, "Maybe it wasn't all nerfed K, maybe we are just super leet?" I don't know, I'm sure that could be the case, but I'm convinced the first two encounters were nerfed as well.

Anyways, here's a funny picture of us levitating down for the final encounter. Trees look very funny levitated.

3. Ulduar. We had been saved up to Yogg so we went to take a look at him again. Once again we got into phase 2 but lost it there. The problem is that we aren't working on Yogg every week. Heck, since we started TOC, its been more like every couple of weeks. So it takes a bit each time to get used to the fight again. I think we're tired of Yoggy yogg yogg though so we'll let Ulduar reset and start working on hard modes.

4. Onyxia. We also did Onyxia last week, which we ran with 8 dps and 2 healers. As we were approaching Onyxia though, I mentioned in raid chat whether it was a little weird for me to feel bad about killing her because I thought she was so pretty. Look! Purty dragon!

Its definitely a pretty simple encounter once everyone figures out what to do. The only issues we had were that Nico and I were dying to either flame breath or the whelps. On one of my deaths to flame breath, I have no idea how it happened because two folks survived when they were literally right next to me. Grrrr. Onyxia definitely drops some nice weapons. Anyways:

So yeah, in the course of one raid week, our guild stepped into 4 raids, though Ulduar was just for one boss. Ok so having all these raids does provide a lot of guilds with content to clear so they don't get bored. As for our guild, I'm not sure what we'll do next raid week given that we will let Ulduar reset and do hard modes. Will we able to do all the other raids? Will we just have to pass on VOA for the week?

While its nice to have the variety options, is it bad to have too many options? Especially for guilds with limited raiding schedules? Does having the other options result in folks not slogging away at stuff like before? Would our guild be forced to keep trying Yogg (and hopefully getting better at it) if we didn't have so many other options?

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More arena talk

I know, I know... more arena talk you ask? I'm telling ya, once you get into it, its addicting. Wut and I did a number of 2v2 matches last night and we did ok again, doubling our team rating. I still don't like rogues, but they weren't our biggest problem last night. My new favorite classes to bitch about? Locks and priests. We went up against several lock and priest duos and while we beat some of them, they were f'in annoying. Seriously.

One final thing I wanted to mention in my post yesterday is what I am currently using as my pvp weapon. So we all know that you can't get any pvp weapons until you build up arena points and ratings. But here's an excellent option for any caster types in the meantime: Pillar of Fortitude.

I got it a while back as a drop off trash in Ulduar. Even if I do build up the arena rating and points, I am questioning whether I would trade this in for a pvp weapon. I can build up resilience on my other gear... perhaps I'll keep the +159 stamina!

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K in arenas!

A while back I had listed a couple of things in game that I still wanted to do. One thing on this list was trying the whole tanking business, which I started a couple weeks ago. Another item on the list that I can now cross off was arena-ing. Hmmm is that the proper verb? Or is it just referred to as "doing arenas"? Anyways, I digress.

Last week was the first full week where I did a bunch of 2v2 and 3v3 arena matches. I did 2v2 with two set ups. I did a couple of matches with Terrondris a rogue, then a bunch of matches with Wutan, a ret pally. Now I didn't end up doing that many 2v2 matches with T, but we went 3-3 which I thought was decent for the first week. With Wut, we ended up going 9-7 and won a bunch of matches that we should have lost (as surmised by the match rating and the other team losing points). I think Wut and I definitely had the advantage that a resto druid-ret pally is a very strong 2v2 team.

In Wut and I's 2v2 teams, there seemed to be a recurring theme in the matches that we did lose. I don't recall us ever beating a team that had a rogue on their side. F'in rogues! They'd search me out as I was prowled and just mow me down. Another interesting point of the 2v2 matches was that some of them were long. I mean damn long. I remember one 2v2 that T and I did against a priest and a lock. They just kept fearing us. We finally got one of them down, but the other one kept fearing us as well. I was like "Damn it! Accept defeat already!"

We also did a number of 3v3 matches with different team setups: 2 different combos of druid, pally, rogue (2 different rogues, same druid and pally - me and Wut) and druid, pally, shammy. I think the #1 rule we learned in the 3v3 teams was the whole focus issue. You have to make sure you're going for the same target.

So I am still pretty new to this whole arena business, but two quick tips:

1. You have to be prepared. And by this I mean resilience gear. Yes, definitely the entire team needs to have resilience, but as the healer for your team, I would say it may be even more critical for you because the other team often comes for you first. I am currently at 818 resilience, which is pretty good and gives me a bit of a cushion. Now you can grind the honor to buy the gear, but don't forget that the wintergrasp vendor has a good deal of stuff you can buy with WG marks.

2. Get one of those trinkets that removes movement impairing effects from the wintergrasp vendor. Its critical. You're going to be using it every single match.

Here's what I did in my 2v2 matches (remember, I'm still a scrub at this). I started out prowled with T or used Wut as my meatshield. With Wut, I'd wait until one of them made a move on Wut first. If I couldn't see their second member, I'd try to wait for them to become visible before I would unprowl and turn into tree. I would then look at my team mate's health and/or whether they had some CC on them and decide whether I would throw a hot on them before or after CCing whichever opposing team member my team mate was not going after.

Now in 3v3 matches, I found that I did not have enough time to put out my CC as a first move. As soon as I made the decision to pop out of prowl, I had to heal Wut and or T. Then I would gauge what was going on before CCing someone. Cyclone is my CC of choice, but I definitely used entangling roots a bit more in the 3v3 matches to avoid the whole diminishing returns thing.

We're still pretty new to this whole arena thing, but I am looking forward to the future weeks and getting better at this!

Now those of you who are arena veterans, I have some questions. Does your team attack or react? And by this I mean is it better to make the first move or wait until the other side makes their first move? Secondly, on 3v3 teams, do you always go for a dps or healer first on the opposing side? Sometimes we went for their healer first, sometimes we went for a dps first, both with different results. Does all of this just depend on the teams you face and your team makeup?

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