Screenshot Friday Game!

I’ve been on my priest a lot lately, while our 10m holy priest has been moving. It’s given me much love for flexing shadow muscles, even with Zarixaanu’s tweaked spec. But having fun on the hunter, too! Including nabbing a PRETTY NEW PET that I’m not sure how long I’ll keep. Kiotikah (coyote, GET IT?) is strictly a boar-loving hunter. But..

Do you know where I am?

She's not purple, but this spot is beautiful

And finally, what my raiding UI usually ends up looking like:

Just another boring UI

Filed under: alts, priest, screenshot, guess, hunter, priest, screenshot, shadow, shadowpriest

In a mood

I really hate failing. I’m my worst critic, in almost everything I do. Sure I can distract myself with fiction, with warcrack, with deviant art, and avoid pondering the magnitude of my failure in all sorts of contexts. I still hate doing it.

As a tank, their deaths are on me

Last night I made some pretty simple mistakes that I feel horrible about. Me, a pro shadow priest that had to MC tank the Razuvious fight in 25man Naxx many many times, totally forgot to release and reMC my tanking mob. I’m left feeling horrible, that I should have known better, that my awesome Raid Leader DID MENTION IT but I didn’t process what he said. In my defense, ick do I have to go through every boss encounter in DXE and turn on all the bars for tracking stuff? Last time I faced this fight I had DBM.

And now for some fun!

That shield is still damn sexy!

Tanking info for Embri

I intended Embri to be a healer the whole time..

I often joke about the multiple personalities of my toons in my guilds. I love my main 3, and the 4th hybrid (paladin) is really growing on me. After listening to the RaidWarning Totem Recall podcast, and their promotion for magelo, I went and redid my free account there. And this is why I did it.

Zarixaanu

Lheaf

Thank you magelo!

I really really like these.

Filed under: alts, paladins, priest, screenshot, specs and loot, tank, tanking, trinket, warcraft

Healing ICC thoughts

I’ve managed to heal through ten man ICC up through Saurfang on my discipline priest, my resto druid and my resto shaman. I also heal 25 man ICC on the druid. It’s been… interesting. And a school of hard knocks. Here’s what has been going through my mind when facing this huge payload of damage I have to help heal.

My main is the druid, and I’ve done far more 25s with her than 10s, I’ve also simply been in there more with her. I have affiliations with other guilds on the server and have pugged the priest and shaman into their tens when they were short healers or doing alt runs. But the most pain has been felt on my druid.

Why?

Because with a good raid, the trash is EASY sauce heal-wise. At least with my co-healers. Most nights we run 2 holy palys, 1 disc priest, 1 or 2 resto shamans, and me. Yeah that’s a lot of friggin heals. And they’re all awesome at their job. So me and my measly little hots are brushed aside pretty easily. And, I try to hurricane or Faerie Fire or roots but with heavy melee and aoe damage, basically I stand there and look pretty. (Good thing my druid is damn fine!)

Last night I was talking in our guild healing chat channel. And I said “honestly, at this point, I pretty much view my job as putting up healing buffers to keep people alive until the palys or the shamans or even the priest let loose a heal bomb. I know the heal bombs are there and I know it’s going to come. I just gotta keep people alive til then.” A very forgettable job. My heal numbers look like crap. My overheal is insane. The numbers don’t bother me since I know and accept my role. But I know my RaidLeaders don’t really get it. How’d I go from uber heals in TOC to nada in ICC? Well we went from 5 to 7 healers. And 1 shaman to 2 most nights. My hots are overwritten so fast, it’s only on fights that are freaking crazy to heal (Marrowgar and Deathwhisper) that I might actually put up a good show numbers wise. I mean, I’m still doing my job. I’m healing to my best. But it’s hard to show that until everyone in the raid is nearly dead and my hots helped keep them alive. Luckily, one of the uber paladins that heals our raids saw my chatting and loosely agreed with me, then later on in our 2healed 10 man he complimented me because we healed that to death and rocked it. The best compliment is when he says “I like not having to stress about the healing situation.” Yay?!

In TOC I loved my crit, even at a lowly 22%. I didn’t even have the (4) T9 that let Rejuv crit, but in TOC it was WG that went a little crazy. My healing strategy was Rejuv and Nourish heavy with WG every time it was on cooldown. But now that I’m in ICC with more healers that heal like mack trucks, I’ve switched to Rejuv and Regrowth, and pulled Swiftmend out of the cobwebs. I mean, it was on my bar, but I barely had to use it. In ICC despite the Chill of the Throne damage is intense and fast heals are king, I think. Well fast heals and bubbles! And my heals… are not fast, unless I nourish spam, which makes me just another healer like the rest in my healing crew. I want to heal my best, but I want to really bring something useful to the raid, and I think my methodology now is good, given the other awesome healers I raid with.

Marrowgar and Deathwhisper are where I really love my glyph of Rejuvenation. Whatever it’s proper name, it boosts heals when targets are below 50%. That thing has saved lives on Marrowgar, I know it. GCD annoys the piss out of me in ICC. Did I mention I’m not haste capped yet? Not by a long shot. And the one upgrade I’ve gotten to drop in ICC10 (last night) has crit on it. #%!@! I actually traded out equal ilevel bracers from TOC and lost 2 sockets just for some haste. This is making me sad. But I refuse to gem purely for haste and I love my socket bonuses. So I’m up a creek without a paddle, basically, until I can get more upgrades.

I learned on Deathwhisper that I simply HAD to change my hot keys for ICC. Which is tough as I try to make my cleanses across all my toons on the same hotkey. My aoe heals on the same hotkey. My bigger heals on the same hotkey. Because of this hot mentality I’m focusing on with the druid, I really had to shift away from that. And I have to bring in my decurse for this Witch. It’s aggravating and pushing me to set up clique and get it working. And it was Marrowgar that made me reconfig my Disc Priest’s buttons.

On my druid, this is where I’m at with my hot buttons.

I really feel I should probably switch Nourish and Swiftmend, but then I use Swiftmend when I intended to nourish and I get confused, mostly because of my keybind setup across all 4 of my healers. I may have to macro Swiftmend to my Rejuv or Regrowth buttons with a modifier. I don’t use many macros at all so this is a big undertaking for me. But like I said, ICC is pushing me to become a better healer. Clique may be needed to transform my cleansing life on all my toons.

As for my Discipline Priest had her share of keybind shakeups to get through ICC. I’ve only been in ten man a few times with her, but the first was extremely rough for a number of reasons and really bushed me to get the most out of my healing there. I learned from that escapade and next time in made some changes.

After the experience in ICC, and leading to a successful 2 heal 10man clear through Saurfang with my resto tree buddy (@xparanormalityx) I used this setup instead.

I have to say, healing ICC with the priest was HELLA FUN. On my druid I feel weak and too slow, and shaman is.. awesome in an epeen sorta way. But I felt my most versatile and best on the priest. Even as a tank healer, two healing it with my druid buddy made me intensely happy to heal again. Maybe it was just that that ten man had a certain ambiance that made everything fun and good. Not sure, but it was great.

The shaman? She’s OP. Walked into a 25man ICC pug and chain heal stomped holy priests that overgeared her, though I was fighting with a druid for pure numbers. The drops that druid got made me cry inside for my main, but the shaman got a suuuuuper shield so I was happy. She’s not the first to get tier 10, as the druid got her gloves for some sexy haste, but she’s undoubtedly the sexiest of my toons, even if the most underplayed. Life in my bank guild is quiet.

Filed under: druid, healing, icecrown, priest, raiding, shaman

on the edge of achievement

So this week has been an “Off” week for my guild raiding, at least 25mans.  That makes sense sit it takes so much work to put together 25mans when we pug at least half the raid, and we were patiently waiting for bugs and kinks to be fixed before we attempted to deal with them.

Last night we hit 10man naxx with a few alts and some friends.  Guess what?  We downed every boss without a single death.  The only thing left standing is Saphiron and Kel’Thuzad.

And I two healed it with my disc priest and a resto druid who spent most of his time playing /s games and dpsing just to show how awesome his heals are.  (That’s what happens when awesom ret palladins roll a resto druid.. be afraid)  We had a shadow priest using VE and providing some replenishment which was nice.  For some reason the two paladin tanks were going OOM all the time, ugh.  

But… OMG Undying?  

My fingertips will be shaking.

Filed under: achievement, naxx10, priest, raiding

Excellently

I titled this post because the state of warcraft for me and my guild is pretty damn fantastic.  I’m actually making gold via the auction house (even if I am losing all my ebonweave) and my third 80 will soon have her epic flyer.  

Why are we fantastic, you ask?

We’ve been knocking down some of the Obsidian Sanctum’s achievements.  First went an 8-man raid clear, then went Twilight Assist (which I stepped out of so our excellent tree’s significant other priest could go, as they are a much better healer than I am via priest, and a resto shammy was already in the raid), then we did HEROIC Twilight Assist last night, without our rag tag collection of fantastic people we pug regularly every week for our scheduled 25mans.  

If I could steal them to my guild I just might, but as it stands now we like being the core to awesome 25mans.  It’s like an unofficial guild alliance with multiple people.  Great stuff.

So I’m happy. 

Filed under: heals, obsidian sanctum, priest, shaman, twilight assist