Not that it's some sort of extreme accomplishment, but 10 man Naxx = completed.
We also, as a guild, took on 25 man Archaevon with just 20 people, most of them fresh 80's in blues with just 3 healers. Archaevon enraged on the first attempt, hitting all of us with a warstomp that instagibbed the entire raid. We were 8 seconds from enrage on the second and final attempt.
I don't mind the (essentially) free loot, but seriously, shouldnt there be -some- hard bosses in the first tier of raiding? I haven't done Malygos, yet, but I can't imagine it to be that much more difficult than anything else I've seen. Maybe it will be hard with the nerfed CoH. Magtheridon and Gruul, even in their current fixed state, are harder than Vault/Naxx. Hell, even Nightbane is harder.
Honestly? I'm looking forward to Arena Season 5. Playing a Priest should be quite difficult in this world of uber melee, no resilience and sick nasty burst.
Friday, December 12, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
All the pretty trinkets
No ganking stories today as the past few days have been full of just trying to clean up our computer from the viruses obtained accidentally from a wow-heroes (the gear comparison site) advertisement. We accidentally clicked on an ad and it was all downhill from there. Please use protection.
Anyways, we're all cleaned up now and have been continuing to gear ourselves up. We realize that this gear that we're acquiring is equivalent to the Kara gear we started off with at the onset of TBC, albiet acquired much more quickly than a couple of years ago, so we're not really worried about putting in an excessive amount of effort to 'get the best of the best'. We've been focusing on obtaining healing gear and to that end have gotten our paws on some reasonable upgrades from various heroics and raids, both 10 and 25 man. Of the gear that we've been able to obtain, a couple stand out, both trinkets.
Egg of Mortal Essence is the 40 Badge of Heroism trinket and while the bonus 98 spellpower is exceedingly nice, the Haste effect is truly the shining star. With it's high chance to proc, you can almost guarantee that it will proc in the first few seconds of a fight. This amount of haste (approx 15%) will drop a Flash Heal (and your GCD) to 1.275s and a talented Greater Heal to 2.125s. Naturally, if it's proc rate is that dependable there are a couple of things you can do: Cast low cost spells prior to a pull to force a proc and count out the 45s internal cooldown to mesh up with other cast reduction spells or other haste effects.
Badge of the Infiltrator is the second trinket that I'm currently using and while it's green and unassuming, the trinket is an excellent example of a highly desired raiding statistic: Intellect. For those out of the loop, Intellect (Int) drives the size of the mana pool as well as a bit of crit. When looking at the current amount of raid healing that is necessary and the specific average amount of healing needed per raid member, a large mana pool is a must. This is especially true if a raid starts moving towards bringing less healers and more dps to power through some encounters as was the case back at the end of TBC. In addition, one cannot ignore the synergy between a large mana pool and Replenishment (the mana return buff from Shadow Priests/Ret Pally/Survival Hunters), making a large mana pool highly desireable. Toss in Shadowfiend's effect and it suddenly becomes obvious why many a casting raider are going with marginally smaller Spellpower totals in favor for stacking other statistics such as Int, Crit and Haste. This is also why I'll probably be going back to my War Mace of Unrequited Love for tonight's raid over my Titansteel Guardian.
It's all about the mana, baybee.
Well, not really, but we'll get to that in a later post.
Anyways, we're all cleaned up now and have been continuing to gear ourselves up. We realize that this gear that we're acquiring is equivalent to the Kara gear we started off with at the onset of TBC, albiet acquired much more quickly than a couple of years ago, so we're not really worried about putting in an excessive amount of effort to 'get the best of the best'. We've been focusing on obtaining healing gear and to that end have gotten our paws on some reasonable upgrades from various heroics and raids, both 10 and 25 man. Of the gear that we've been able to obtain, a couple stand out, both trinkets.
Egg of Mortal Essence is the 40 Badge of Heroism trinket and while the bonus 98 spellpower is exceedingly nice, the Haste effect is truly the shining star. With it's high chance to proc, you can almost guarantee that it will proc in the first few seconds of a fight. This amount of haste (approx 15%) will drop a Flash Heal (and your GCD) to 1.275s and a talented Greater Heal to 2.125s. Naturally, if it's proc rate is that dependable there are a couple of things you can do: Cast low cost spells prior to a pull to force a proc and count out the 45s internal cooldown to mesh up with other cast reduction spells or other haste effects.
Badge of the Infiltrator is the second trinket that I'm currently using and while it's green and unassuming, the trinket is an excellent example of a highly desired raiding statistic: Intellect. For those out of the loop, Intellect (Int) drives the size of the mana pool as well as a bit of crit. When looking at the current amount of raid healing that is necessary and the specific average amount of healing needed per raid member, a large mana pool is a must. This is especially true if a raid starts moving towards bringing less healers and more dps to power through some encounters as was the case back at the end of TBC. In addition, one cannot ignore the synergy between a large mana pool and Replenishment (the mana return buff from Shadow Priests/Ret Pally/Survival Hunters), making a large mana pool highly desireable. Toss in Shadowfiend's effect and it suddenly becomes obvious why many a casting raider are going with marginally smaller Spellpower totals in favor for stacking other statistics such as Int, Crit and Haste. This is also why I'll probably be going back to my War Mace of Unrequited Love for tonight's raid over my Titansteel Guardian.
It's all about the mana, baybee.
Well, not really, but we'll get to that in a later post.
Monday, December 8, 2008
How to be an A-Hole
Mind Control someone off of the turtle ferrys when you're in deep water.
Bonus points if you put a snare on them.
Bonus points if you put a snare on them.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Healing Heroics and Naxx
On the day that I hit 80, I was invited to dps a Heroic Nexus run and miraculously won the epic caster mace drop off of Keristraza, edging out a guildy healy Priest. I don't know how I did it because my rolls are usually epic fails. Fast foward a week later, after getting back from vacation, I drop about 4k gold to craft some healing gear, among which are: Titansteel Guardian, Moonshroud Robe and Moonshroud Gloves. Amusingly, I didn't even get a chance to use the War Mace of Unrequited Love and it got vendored amazingly quickly.
Hey, 82 additional +healing is pretty darn sexy. That and the extra Stamina will help for PvP.
Healing a Heroic GunDrak last night, it dawned upon me, while corpse running, that I actually have to try. Also, as a Priest, I don't have Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness to cover my ass if I didn't happen to anticipate needing a big heal omgrightnow. Since that long corpse run, we've made the adjustment and actually thinking about prehealing and burst anticipation has been enjoyable. It's like Arenas. But not. I dunno. Does that make sense? Whatever. As a reference, healing heroics in TBC as a Resto Druid was a joke because we knew all of the fights inside and out and because of the sheer overpoweredness of Lifebloom/Rejuv/Swiftmend. I had no clue how the fights went in GunDrak, but we powered through regardless. If all else fails, just brute force it, amirite?
Overall, it only took... *ahem* a... few... wipes for me to get my healing bearings on straight and after that, we did fairly well. No drop upgrades but we'll greedily take those badges. We want that hot egg trinket for 40 badges, and we want it ASAP!
Anyways, I got invited to another guild's Heroic Naxx (25 man) run and the following exchange took place after clearing the Spider Wing (all paraphrased):
Raider1: Recount: Total Healing
Raider1: 1. Rukuz: 4600000
Raider1: 2. OtherHealer1: 4100000
Raider1: 3. OtherHealer2: ....
PallyHealer1: There is NO way he did 4 million healing
Raider2: Why not? My Recount says he did 4 mil
PallyHealer1: nono, for that last fight, there's no way he did 4 million
Raider2: Well, of course not. It says Total Healing
PallyHealer1: ... oh
PallyHealer1: but still, how could he have done 4 million?
PallyHealer2: It's probably all overhealing
PallyHealer2: Anyone have Overhealing meters?
Raider1: Recount: Total Overhealing
Raider1: 1. PallyHealer1: 2000000
Raider1: 2. PallyHealer2: 1900000
...
Raider1: 4. HolyPriest2: 1700000
...
Raider1: 6. Rukuz: 1000000
I took my headset off at that point and with my hands off of the keyboard (to prevent any accidental activation of my mic) laughed out loud. Now, I completely understand that healing meters aren't a good measurement of .. anything.. but seeing the indignation of the Paladins in the chat when they saw that they were not at the top of the healing meters and that that my overhealing was among the lowest was just pure awesome.
I think people assume that Circle of Healing Priests just mash their CoH button with impunity, and, truthfully, that's very likely the case and is probably what is drawing all of the dev attention to CoH and Wild Growth. However, instead of mashing CoH, I worked on multitasking by keeping my glyphed Renew on the tanks, bouncing Prayer of Mending whenever I could and dispelling Cripple from the melee. I'm still getting used to all the different heals for the different situations and I need to relocate that Binding Heal button. It definitely would have saved me from burning GCD's and mana on 2 Flash Heals. Oh well, live and learn (or die and learn, too).
Honestly? Naxx wasn't hard by any means and I'm totally not boasting about my experience in there, because I'm sure there will be much more Naxx to come (KZ2.0). But, I can boast about my rolling abilities, because I won the Robes of Mutation off of Noth. Which was awesome, because I had JUST crafted my Moonshroud Robe.
/eyetwitch
Hey, 82 additional +healing is pretty darn sexy. That and the extra Stamina will help for PvP.
Healing a Heroic GunDrak last night, it dawned upon me, while corpse running, that I actually have to try. Also, as a Priest, I don't have Swiftmend and Nature's Swiftness to cover my ass if I didn't happen to anticipate needing a big heal omgrightnow. Since that long corpse run, we've made the adjustment and actually thinking about prehealing and burst anticipation has been enjoyable. It's like Arenas. But not. I dunno. Does that make sense? Whatever. As a reference, healing heroics in TBC as a Resto Druid was a joke because we knew all of the fights inside and out and because of the sheer overpoweredness of Lifebloom/Rejuv/Swiftmend. I had no clue how the fights went in GunDrak, but we powered through regardless. If all else fails, just brute force it, amirite?
Overall, it only took... *ahem* a... few... wipes for me to get my healing bearings on straight and after that, we did fairly well. No drop upgrades but we'll greedily take those badges. We want that hot egg trinket for 40 badges, and we want it ASAP!
Anyways, I got invited to another guild's Heroic Naxx (25 man) run and the following exchange took place after clearing the Spider Wing (all paraphrased):
Raider1: Recount: Total Healing
Raider1: 1. Rukuz: 4600000
Raider1: 2. OtherHealer1: 4100000
Raider1: 3. OtherHealer2: ....
PallyHealer1: There is NO way he did 4 million healing
Raider2: Why not? My Recount says he did 4 mil
PallyHealer1: nono, for that last fight, there's no way he did 4 million
Raider2: Well, of course not. It says Total Healing
PallyHealer1: ... oh
PallyHealer1: but still, how could he have done 4 million?
PallyHealer2: It's probably all overhealing
PallyHealer2: Anyone have Overhealing meters?
Raider1: Recount: Total Overhealing
Raider1: 1. PallyHealer1: 2000000
Raider1: 2. PallyHealer2: 1900000
...
Raider1: 4. HolyPriest2: 1700000
...
Raider1: 6. Rukuz: 1000000
I took my headset off at that point and with my hands off of the keyboard (to prevent any accidental activation of my mic) laughed out loud. Now, I completely understand that healing meters aren't a good measurement of .. anything.. but seeing the indignation of the Paladins in the chat when they saw that they were not at the top of the healing meters and that that my overhealing was among the lowest was just pure awesome.
I think people assume that Circle of Healing Priests just mash their CoH button with impunity, and, truthfully, that's very likely the case and is probably what is drawing all of the dev attention to CoH and Wild Growth. However, instead of mashing CoH, I worked on multitasking by keeping my glyphed Renew on the tanks, bouncing Prayer of Mending whenever I could and dispelling Cripple from the melee. I'm still getting used to all the different heals for the different situations and I need to relocate that Binding Heal button. It definitely would have saved me from burning GCD's and mana on 2 Flash Heals. Oh well, live and learn (or die and learn, too).
Honestly? Naxx wasn't hard by any means and I'm totally not boasting about my experience in there, because I'm sure there will be much more Naxx to come (KZ2.0). But, I can boast about my rolling abilities, because I won the Robes of Mutation off of Noth. Which was awesome, because I had JUST crafted my Moonshroud Robe.
/eyetwitch
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Working the Dalaran Street Corner and a Gank Win
Ding!
ty, ty.
We hit 80 last week prior to our week long vacation to the land of Schnitzel and Bratwurst and haven't set foot in Azeroth until last night. After jumping around in Dalaran looking for something to do, I finally bit the bullet and specced deep holy to get my Heroics grind on. Unsurprisingly, its much easier to get groups as a healer than as a Shadow Priest. We've already healed our first Heroic (Violet Hold), using our silly crafted gear and didn't have much trouble. Of course, since we've been playing as Shadow and been away from the game for so long, remembering what we had hotkeyed to various powers was definitely a trip. It was definitely different from rolling Lifeblooms as a Druid to trying to get out of the 5SR with Greater heals.
As for right now, we intend on whoring ourselves out for rep, gear and class/binding familiarity for PvP purposes, which are really the important things to consider as I see some fun times ahead trying to learn how to heal as a Priest. Yeah, we said it. Whoring. Use me and abuse me, but as long as I get my badges and rep as fast as possible so I don't have to do it again, I'm ok with it.
I'd like to share some experiences with Lake Wintergrasp, but sadly, I've only participated in one so far and it was quite... confusing, to say the least. I'll tackle that in a bit when I get a few LWG's under our (now buckled!) belt.
However, for today, I'd like to share a Gank Win while I was feverishly working on my last half bubble of xp to hit 80.
Triple Threat becomes Triple Death.
We were on our last half bubble of xp, trying to do anything that would give us xp in Icecrown. One of those dailies is very frustrating as a clothy single target dps machine (I was leveling as Shadow): That's Abominable. It's the one where you kill Abominations to get some chilled body part (appendix, goiter, whatever) so that you can make your own explodable Abomination pet to kill a bunch of Undead. Well, I had already died once because I had overaggro'd and the Abomination pet not only didn't kill everything, but exploded next to me, sending me flying into a new pack of Undead. Which. Can't. Be. Feared.
splat
At this point, I'm ready for level 80, sick and tired of grinding quests and what should happen, but a trio of Alliance lands near me and starts killing stuff for their quests. Warrior, Ret Pally and Enhancement Shaman. None of them are favorable matchups.
No biggie, I'll just kill a few abomina... oh... the Warrior is running over to me.
I lay into him with a couple of dots after his murderous intent becomes clear, but, without a trinket and without any Resilience, I'm pretty much mincemeat. I did try to get back as fast as possible since my dots and omgfutileswd took him to 30%, but he had gotten healed to full from either the Pally or the Shaman buddy he was teamed with.
I manage to rez, fly away and heal/mana up, and am about to leave the area to find some other quest hub to get our elusive half bubble when we see a Horde Ret Pally hovering over them. A quick whisper and an /invite has the Blood Elf laying the smack down into the Enhancement Shaman while I'm dotting up the Warrior.
Warrior goes down (yay!) but the two hybrids rip my impromptu teammate apart, even with my heals. I notice that the Space Goat Paladin has used Divine Shield and seeing them heal each other makes me turn tail, mount and get away.
whew!
Teammate and I lament about the burst dps people can output these days and while we're chatting and hovering on flying mounts, I notice that the Alliance Trio has moved over to an elevated plateau area and are ranged pulling Frost Wyrms. Melee hybrids ranged pulling means that their tiny manapools are running low and with the amount of damage they've taken (each at around half life with no mana) they're prime targets for a vengeance gank. Oh, and (only now do I notice) the Grand Marshal Warrior is also at half health, presumably because he rezzed and flew over as soon as possible.
No mana means no heals and I charged in and quickly laid waste to the Enhancement Shaman who had a couple of Wyrms on him. I turned to the Ret Pally and while I interrupted his Holy Light with a Psychic Scream and Deathed him for the kill, saw the Warrior trying to run away.
Except we were on an elevated ledge without anywhere to go, unless he wanted to crater.
He got the charge off (sigh) and as my dots were eating him up, he was able to get an Intercept off to bring me into Execute range.
eek!
Dispersion saved the day and as I sat there, a purple ball of glowing vengeance, the dots got him close enough that a Shadow Word: Death (button was being frantically mashed so that it would go off immediately after Dispersion wore off) finished him off.
And that's how a clothy ganks 3 melee.
ty, ty.
We hit 80 last week prior to our week long vacation to the land of Schnitzel and Bratwurst and haven't set foot in Azeroth until last night. After jumping around in Dalaran looking for something to do, I finally bit the bullet and specced deep holy to get my Heroics grind on. Unsurprisingly, its much easier to get groups as a healer than as a Shadow Priest. We've already healed our first Heroic (Violet Hold), using our silly crafted gear and didn't have much trouble. Of course, since we've been playing as Shadow and been away from the game for so long, remembering what we had hotkeyed to various powers was definitely a trip. It was definitely different from rolling Lifeblooms as a Druid to trying to get out of the 5SR with Greater heals.
As for right now, we intend on whoring ourselves out for rep, gear and class/binding familiarity for PvP purposes, which are really the important things to consider as I see some fun times ahead trying to learn how to heal as a Priest. Yeah, we said it. Whoring. Use me and abuse me, but as long as I get my badges and rep as fast as possible so I don't have to do it again, I'm ok with it.
I'd like to share some experiences with Lake Wintergrasp, but sadly, I've only participated in one so far and it was quite... confusing, to say the least. I'll tackle that in a bit when I get a few LWG's under our (now buckled!) belt.
However, for today, I'd like to share a Gank Win while I was feverishly working on my last half bubble of xp to hit 80.
Triple Threat becomes Triple Death.
We were on our last half bubble of xp, trying to do anything that would give us xp in Icecrown. One of those dailies is very frustrating as a clothy single target dps machine (I was leveling as Shadow): That's Abominable. It's the one where you kill Abominations to get some chilled body part (appendix, goiter, whatever) so that you can make your own explodable Abomination pet to kill a bunch of Undead. Well, I had already died once because I had overaggro'd and the Abomination pet not only didn't kill everything, but exploded next to me, sending me flying into a new pack of Undead. Which. Can't. Be. Feared.
splat
At this point, I'm ready for level 80, sick and tired of grinding quests and what should happen, but a trio of Alliance lands near me and starts killing stuff for their quests. Warrior, Ret Pally and Enhancement Shaman. None of them are favorable matchups.
No biggie, I'll just kill a few abomina... oh... the Warrior is running over to me.
I lay into him with a couple of dots after his murderous intent becomes clear, but, without a trinket and without any Resilience, I'm pretty much mincemeat. I did try to get back as fast as possible since my dots and omgfutileswd took him to 30%, but he had gotten healed to full from either the Pally or the Shaman buddy he was teamed with.
I manage to rez, fly away and heal/mana up, and am about to leave the area to find some other quest hub to get our elusive half bubble when we see a Horde Ret Pally hovering over them. A quick whisper and an /invite has the Blood Elf laying the smack down into the Enhancement Shaman while I'm dotting up the Warrior.
Warrior goes down (yay!) but the two hybrids rip my impromptu teammate apart, even with my heals. I notice that the Space Goat Paladin has used Divine Shield and seeing them heal each other makes me turn tail, mount and get away.
whew!
Teammate and I lament about the burst dps people can output these days and while we're chatting and hovering on flying mounts, I notice that the Alliance Trio has moved over to an elevated plateau area and are ranged pulling Frost Wyrms. Melee hybrids ranged pulling means that their tiny manapools are running low and with the amount of damage they've taken (each at around half life with no mana) they're prime targets for a vengeance gank. Oh, and (only now do I notice) the Grand Marshal Warrior is also at half health, presumably because he rezzed and flew over as soon as possible.
No mana means no heals and I charged in and quickly laid waste to the Enhancement Shaman who had a couple of Wyrms on him. I turned to the Ret Pally and while I interrupted his Holy Light with a Psychic Scream and Deathed him for the kill, saw the Warrior trying to run away.
Except we were on an elevated ledge without anywhere to go, unless he wanted to crater.
He got the charge off (sigh) and as my dots were eating him up, he was able to get an Intercept off to bring me into Execute range.
eek!
Dispersion saved the day and as I sat there, a purple ball of glowing vengeance, the dots got him close enough that a Shadow Word: Death (button was being frantically mashed so that it would go off immediately after Dispersion wore off) finished him off.
And that's how a clothy ganks 3 melee.
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