Holy Moly!

It looks like I’m going to be expanding my horizons, as I’ve been accepted into one of the few hard-mode guilds, who are currently doing 25-man heroic ToC.

Needless to say, I’m a little nervous.

Or maybe, quite a bit nervous.

You see, I’ve been given a trial as disc/holy despite my having no holy experience.  I’ve done my research, re-gemmed and adjusted my gear to suit holy (and picked up a couple of upgrades to suit), along with changing my much-disliked shadow spec to holy, and setting up Vuhdo and Power Auras for my new holy spec and spells.

Now it’s a matter of getting some hands-on experience to go with my new-found theoretical knowledge.  Might be a little short of time, as first raid is scheduled for tomorrow night.

Yay, me?

LFG Raiding Guild?

Well, that settles that…  Another week where the guild couldn’t field a full 25-man raid, and we’ve finally thrown in the towel as a 25-man progression raiding guild (after the officers relented after their initial decision to retire, and tried for two more months to keep us going).

I haven’t decided what I’m going to do – as a healer, 25-man raiding is just more fun.  10-man, while a good time-filler, doesn’t measure up for challenge or rewards (other than trinkets, in some cases).  Some guild members have considered trying to do 10-man raids, maybe also 10-man hard-mode ToC (which I haven’t been able to do – disc priest healing isn’t good enough), but I don’t really want to do anything less than 25-mans (although that’s possibly my contrary nature shining through).

Unfortunately, after the wonderful experience of this guild I’m not looking forward to starting over with another guild if I want to get back into another 25-man guild.  It not only means leaving behind the collection of weird and wonderful people in this guild, but also hoping I get lucky and the guild I join is a fun group to raid with.

At heart, though, I just feel sad.  With our GM planning on server-transferring in search of 25-man progression (possibly along with other members), it feels to me like we’re also losing the heart of the guild.  Sadly I’m about to hit a financial crisis of my own, so server transferring myself isn’t really likely anytime soon (and would be problematic, with my support network of alts and lack of experience as a healer).

/sigh

Tankadin? Tankadin!

Well, raiding has ground to a halt: 25-man ToC, VoA and Onyxia only took a couple of nights, and we didn’t have enough tanks for our 10-man raid for two of the remaining nights.  So I finishing leveling my paladin.

Meet Binglerouse, level-80 tankadin extra-ordinaire.  Also tankadin very inexperienced.

I finished leveling her as I began; as prot spec.  Needless to say, it wasn’t the quickest of processes.  But. Once I picked up Divine Plea and Guarded by the Light, things became substantially faster.  (Yay for pulling a half-dozen mobs at a time, and finishing the fight with full health and mana)

The hardest thing has been finding information about how to gear, how to talent, and how to tankadin.  There are still some useful guides, but even then some of them are a bit out-of-date (such as the Item Enhancements page on maintankadin, which hasn’t been updated to cover epic gems).  I’ve been able to pick up enough ideas to give me a very basic understanding, now it’s a case of getting that chance to put it into practice.

And she’s pretty well geared (comparatively speaking), with the crafted titansteel helm and shield, the crafted boots and belt from Ulduar and crafted chest and wrist from ToC.  (Have I mentioned how lately how much gold I no longer have?  Well, I have now, and I can thank Bingle for it.)

Oh, and she’s had a haircut to go with her new gear.  I think it suits her.  And don’t you love our new guild tabard?  (I wanted a kitty, but nooooo…)

I might also gear her up as a healer – it’s early days still.

As far as the rest of my assorted alts…  Well, it’s a case of that vague ennui settling in during the dark period when you’re trying to choke down the dregs of the last content patch, with the promise of better things to come from the next patch.  Icecrown may await us, but not nearly as much as we’re awaiting it.

I tanked ToC10 on Dingle last week, but my performance was pretty awful – seriously, it’s was almost failpug level.  (It improved slightly after juggling some gear, but still, it wasn’t pretty…)

Hopefully things will improve this week – we’re really pushing things as far as attendance, and I can see it only getting worse before Icecrown and 3.3.  And it’s around time to get ready for tonight’s raid, so time to log over and get busy.  (Raiding or waiting, time will tell)

/wave

Life As A Healer: Conclusion

Healing is fun, even on a smaller scale.  No, I don’t mean gnomes.  At least, not exclusively.

Note: This will probably be the last of my “Life As A Healer” series (until I find something new and interesting to add on the subject).  Next post will be back to the same old content (ie, filler, most likely).

The last week has been a bit of change in scope.  I think I spent more time healing 10-mans than I did 25-mans, and it’s a surprisingly different experience as a tank-healer while still remaining pretty much the same as a disc priest.

You see, with 25-man content being so brief at the moment the guild has formed a couple of 10-man groups* to fill in the time leftover after we’ve cleared what we have for the week.  The idea is to give us practice with hard modes that we’re not just capable of doing so far, along with a bunch of Ulduar hard-modes that we’ve never gotten around to (such as Firefighter). 

Anyway.  In 25-man there’s more delineation in roles; the tank healer heals the tank, and the raid healer heals the raid.  (Yes, I know disc priests can do both, but I’m trying to make a point, so shush.)  In 10-man content there’s not enough healers around for that to be completely viable (unless the raid healers are all flavours of awesome), so it’s more a case of tank healer healing the tank and raiders X, Y and Z, while the raid healers keep on doing what they’re usually doing.

The odd thing for me is how different it feels, for all that I’m doing pretty much the same thing I was doing beforehand: throwing shields around like a crazy person (or crazy dwarf), and throwing out the occasional penance on either the tank (preferable) or low-health raid members (if the tank is topped up).

The difference is that having only 40% of the number of people to track mean it’s easier to keep track of where people are and what’s happening to them (well, apart from my occasional bouts of tunnel vision).  25-man encounters are frantic (and to be honest, pretty darn crowded with 25 people stepping on each other’s toes), but good raiders are almost interchangeable.

10-mans, on the other hand, are a lot more forgiving thanks to the reduced damage and other effects.  And the smaller raid size means you tend to get to know your fellow raiders better – with 25 people, there’s often people you don’t get to know that well due to the number of people you’re raiding with (especially for someone who tends not to socialise easily, such as myself).

I think I prefer 25-man raiding, to be honest, especially for hard modes.  Sadly we’re not doing them too much; a number of guildies are burnt out on Ulduar25 hardmodes, quite understandably, and we’re just not geared and capable enough for heroic ToC25.  I’m probably going to be sitting out for the last two heroic ToC10 bosses, so that reduces the number of challenging encounters even further.

It’s about raidtime though, so time to go heal stuff.  Possibly even my targets.

/wave

* - Contrary to popular belief, the 10-man group I’m a member of is in fact not called “Team Nutsack.”

Life As A Healer: Week Five

You know, healing is fun!

And showing up appealingly high on the healing meters, even as disc, is even more fun.  Maybe it’s a little misrepresentative of how disc priests work on most fights, but it’s still great for the ego.  (On an unrelated note, it’s curious to see the difference between the parses of the same fight on World of Logs and WoW Meter Online – I enjoy the higher numbers I get on WoL, but my inner pessimist is more inclined to believe what WMO shows)

All the same, I’m enjoying myself more, the more I raid, and I’m becoming more adventurous in how I heal as my confidence grows.  (I started working Prayer of Healing and Binding Heal into my repertoire tonight, with some small success.)  I think I’m starting to get a feel for when it’s safe to do something pre-emptive (like throwing out a bunch of shields on other raiders, pre-empting the tantrums on XT) vs reactive healing that was my usual reaction when I was starting out.

Speaking of raiding, my guild is trying something different with our scheduled raid times; we’re going to be running both our 25-man and two 10-man groups, and doing the 10-mans on two (or possibly three) of our four raid nights.  I think we’re going to be putting some time into the ToC 10-man heroic, not sure if we’ll be doing much in Ulduar (apart from some of the hard modes, possibly).  We’ll see where the idea goes, though – it’s still early days, and we still have some fine-tuning to be done.

I’m easy, though – more raids I can heal, the happier I am about the whole idea.

The news that 3.3 has hit the PTR is extremely welcome; I’m getting tired of the same old content, and the thought of something new (and possibly more challenging) is pretty appealing.  And with Icecrown so close, it just means we’re getting that much closer to Cataclysm, and more dwarves to level.

Ah well, time to practice patience.  And heal.

/wave