Joining a party – Get invited as a healer, despite your preference for DPS. Proceed to stare extremely hard at the screen until the Rogue and competing Enhancement Shaman who are both after your mace leave the party.

First Boss – Scream at your thick tank to “PICK UP THE DAMN [Insert race of ranged opponent here]”, because you can’t heal them when you are dead. Twice now that has happened, twice being the sum and total of the times I have healed this instance. Pick.Up.The.Damn.Troll.

Second Boss – Gnash your teeth at your DPS because you don’t give a damn if you can heal through the flashy light, it’s the principle of the thing. Don’t look at the blinding exploding guy is on the same tier as don’t stand in the frickin’ fire.

Third Boss – Cry to [deity/enlightened being of your choice] because why the hell does the final form of the last boss have to be so much of a bitch to heal and OMG DEATH LASERS I just died again rage.

After you win – Mutter to yourself because despite the numerous upgrades that you could have got for your main spec, none of them dropped, indeed, no upgrades for anyone else dropped, and all you got was some flashy healer belt, further putting your off spec gear ahead of your main spec gear in terms of quality.

I don’t like Trial of the Champion. It’s an evil place. Whilst Kazura waltzes around in her nice new gear earned from there, I get my face blown up by the ridiculously difficult to heal final phase of the Black Knight and mourn my lack of shiny maces.

Disclaimer: Screaming and crying not advised. Gnashing and Muttering certainly advised.

We spent most of last night wiping on those damn Jormungar in the new 10 man raid. Gormok was ridiculously easy after a few shots – chasing Snobolds down quickly became routine. We just couldn’t get the Jormungar down. That fight has got to be a prime example of where 10 mans are more difficult than 25 mans – if someone dies, which is very likely to happen, then your entire attempt is pretty much doomed. Guh.

I’ve kind of lost steam on Ilthiran – not really that interested in playing him right now. In fact, I’d say after that brief period of revival, I’m kind of bored of WoW again. –shrug- Anyway, I did manage to get to level 71, and thus, Swift Flight Form;

I also managed to finish the Nexus – we had absolutely zero problems this time, so, ha, suck it, Kyp, it was totally the healers fault last time!

Faulsey received a brief revival as well. He had 26 Emblems of Heroism, which were just sitting there, annoying me, so I ran a few HCs to get up to 40 EoH and 200 SKS, to spend on an heirloom chest and shoulders for my Paladin – he’d previously been using some mail shoulders.

Logging onto said Paladin, I had a case of “hey, I should have read the patch notes” when I noticed that A. My Judgements were returning a flat 8% of my Base Mana when cast, despite there being nothing in the tooltip to suggest they would do so, and B. Hand of Reckoning now does ridiculous damage if used to pull a target. Geez, as if leveling Ret Paladin’s had to be even more powerful! –grin-

And random cool screenshots:

(So Algalon is kind of old news by now – I’d never seen this, and didn’t expect any of the scrubs on my server to have been able to take him out!)

Play this. (No need to watch, just a static image.)

If you try to deny that that is one of the most fantastic pieces of Boss music in gaming history, I… well… there’s just no helping you, ok?

And speaking of Razorscale..!

Popped onto Ellaria tonight, just to check and see of the Razormaw Matriarch was up – I want a raptor for her, too! – and I asked my guild how raiding was going, since I haven’t really been keeping up with their progress (sorry guys!)

Kyp: Actually, we’re one DPS short for Ulduar tonight…
Me: Orly? –whistles nonchalantly-
Kyp invites you to join a group.

Bwahah. Since it was the last night before the reset, they’d already done a number of Bosses in the place. First we did Razorscale, as you can see above, and then moved onto Auriaya, who I’d never fought before. We wiped the first time, but beat her with ease the second time. Unfortunately, the crazy lady didn’t drop the shoulders I’d have liked. Bah!

Now all I’m missing from the Antechamber is the Iron Council… maybe one day. We attempted Freya after that, but, I dunno, Freya is just one massive drug trip. QUICK, HIDE UNDER THE MUSHROOMS, NO, NOT THE SMALL ONES, THE BIG ONES, AND OMG THERE’S A HEALING TREE, KILL IT, NOW A GIANT PLANT AND SOME ELEMENTALS HAVE SPAWNED WHAT THE HELL’S GOING ON OH WE’RE DEAD. I believe they’ve downed her before, but a couple of the DPS were having latency issues, plus me and another person had never done the fight, so we were destroyed.

And for Stop – Look! It’s a genuine, honest to Eonar, Female Dwarf!

After that, I gave the new 5 man instance a try for the first time – me and Kazura had actually joined a party for it a few nights ago, but it didn’t go anywhere at all. We tried again tonight, and I was healing… Man, that place is rather hard to heal. The last boss is insane. He ate our faces first attempt, and second attempt it was very close. I kind of just hit chain heal over and over, hoping people wouldn’t die. For a 5 man, that is absolutely ridiculous. (Still not as bad as HC Old Kingdom. HATEHATEHATE.)

Mostly thanks to the free emblems on the mini-bosses before Freya, I had enough to get a delicious set of leg armour. Mmm, finally “naturally” at the spell hit cap. Course, I don’t raid much, but damnit, it’s the principle of the thing.

And why yes, yes I am totally on a WoW kick again now that I’ve got plenty of free time and nothing to do with it. What’s your point?

Level 70 Druid! Now that I’m in Northrend, I’m actually able to start tanking instances! Yaaay!

Firstly, tried my hand at tanking Utgarde Keep. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great, either. I think tanking is the hardest of the three roles, by far. Target switching to maintain aggro when you have Death and Decay happy Death Knights is a right pain in the neck, and I’m still not sure of all my abilities, nor have I developed any sort of faith in healers – Barkskin and Survival Instincts are used liberally.

(Note to self: Must sort out Omen’s Aggro warning – not really needed as a tank. And it obstructs screen something awful.)

Shortly after that, I tried Nexus. Whilst trash was generally better than it had been in UK (though there are a couple of pulls that aren’t there in HC Nexus, which confused me greatly), we didn’t get Keri down. We wiped twice, and our healer had to go. I did my best, I really did, and we had her at 8k the last time – I swear I didn’t get a single heal the last 10 seconds before I died, so I’m blaming it on the healer. Bah!

Whilst we’re on the topic of the Nexus, I ran it last night with Kazura and Yuanjia for some emblems. I’ve run it something like 25 times now (20 of those actively looking for the stupid mace) and I never saw it, not once. Kazura had a similar record. We’ve both found other maces – I have a similar quality one from Naxx, and she has a nice one from the new 5-man. And do you know what happened when we looted Keri?

NOWAI!

That slimy harpy bitch! D:<

On the upside, I did get this that run.

I’ve also been on a bit of a baby Hordie kick recently. Spurred on by a desire to do Mulgore again – I love Mulgore – I made a little Tauren Warrior, another in a long line of Faulsey’s, who became the first of that class to reach 10… Compared with at least 5 Hunters and 3 each Shaman and Druid. Only thing I haven’t gotten to at least 10 now is Rogue.

Another baby Hordie, this time created due to a desire to get a Raptor on a character (without lots of rep grinding on some higher level Hordies, or grinding ZG on Ellaria), is a Troll Shaman on my PvP realm.

As much as I love Draenei, I feel the Troll Totem quests are a little bit better – maybe because you do get some nice views doing them. Did you know that at level 1 you could quite easily get to Ratchet from the Valley of Trials within 5 minutes?

I reckon I’ll probably play this gal a decent bit the next few days, to get me a raptor!

I’m finished at my little job now – seriously, the management was farcical, I had to get out of there – and am totally free for the next two weeks before I start university. Well, kind of free. I need an eye test and new glasses, amongst other expensive things. Guh. But in any case, interest in WoW has returned somewhat recently, so I should be playing a fair bit.

The original Laser Heal – none of yer wannabe Energy Ball Heals.

At the limits of my patience with Keristrasza and her stupid mace, I decided I wanted to try and heal Naxxramas, with or without it.

As luck would have it, Kiaara was putting together a group for Naxx10, so I joined up with them to put my lazurz to the test. Patchwerk was already down, so we started with Grobbulus. It was kind of a sloppy kill, but we downed his fat ass, and as a reward for not destroying WoW due to Keri’s stinginess, he dropped a shiny Infection Repulser. Hurrah! –strokes his lovely mace-

Due to raid makeup, we decided not to try Gluth, and instead doubled back to Spider. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you will know that PUG + Me + Anub’Rekhan = fail. We failed twice, then we had success! For the “easiest” boss in the place, he’s always given me the most trouble!

Faerlina was totally uneventful. We wiped once on Maexxna – at 2% no less! We had four druids, and I swear not a one was using Abolish Poison! (Kia, you are allowed to not due to being Feral, but what was the tree’s excuse?!) I wasn’t in the main tanks group, so my Cleansing Totem wouldn’t affect him. We squished her the second time, though.

Moved onto Noth, and despite copious amounts of decursers, you betcha, I was the only person decursing. I was technically the raider healer, so I had the most time to do it, but still. Mneh.

Heigan was hilarious fail. Everyone but me (who was cheating and had my Enhancement boots with a run speed enchant equipped) and the tank died on the first dance phase. I was so tempted just to keep on going till Heigan was dead, but figured that might take quite some time, and the tank wanted to die, so we wiped and called it.

For my first raid healing experience, I’d say it was fairly successful. When I finally looked at the meters at the end of the raid (I’m a strong believer in basing your healers performance on “Did anyone die that you could have saved?” rather than LULZGAIZIDIDTHEMOSTHEALZ!) I had done the most overall healing, with (surprisingly) the least overheal (still like 28% or something).

On the other hand, healing assignments were kind of… loose. Whilst we had said that the Priest was on Main Tank, Druid on Off Tank, and me on raid, the other two were doing a lot of raid healing (probably why they were ending up sucked dry of mana when I still had 60%), and for my part I was doing a lot of panic heals on the tanks.

Contrary to somewhat popular belief re: shaman healing, no, chain heal was not all I used. There were some chain heal-tastic times, such as when a whole group of people were impaled on Anub’Rekhan, but most of my healing was actually in the form of Healing Wave (kinda surprised at that myself), though Chain Heal was very close behind.

Things I think I need to improve upon:

1. Clever use of Riptide. Riptide is a decent instant heal with a snazzy HoT component, and it will boost the next chain heal on that target by 25% (if they are the first target), consuming the HoT. I rarely used Riptide for this – it was used mostly for the HoT component (particularly on Maexxna, where every little HoT helps!) or as a quick heal if I had to keep moving (on myself at Heigan )
2. More use of Lesser Healing Wave. I love the Riptide animation and sound so much that I used it as my quick patch-up spell in Heroics. Raids do not really allow for it to be used like this, so I tried to use LHW more, but wasn’t really successful.
3. Sticking to my assigned role. The other two healers weren’t great about this either, but I found myself throwing panic heals at the tank far too often, possibly sniping other heals (though I would interrupt casting if I saw another heal going through)

Overall, it was pretty fun for my first attempt at healing in a Raid. I’d much rather be up there doing the pewpew, but still, I won’t be too miffed to switch over to healing on the rare occasions that I need to.

-

S’been a while since my last update, so here’s some random stuff.

Little montage of my recent achievements (pre that Naxx run). Basically all self explanatory, except Orbital Bombardment. We left the Flame Tower up, which was kinda fun in an “omg I can’t move I’m surrounded by walls of fire eeek” way. It may have been a better idea to do something else – perhaps Storm tower? –shrugs- In any case, I got to be a chopper driver!

Hells yeah. Unfortunately, I was somewhat limited by game mechanics, but in my head, Ella was firing off lightning bolts and bursts of lava as she weaved in between dwarves and the legs of iron giants. She also tried to hook an iron dwarf on her claw as she drove by, but being made of metal, all that achieved was a nasty bend on her claw.

Glargh. So last nights Naxx raid, which I was hoping to be the first time I’d make serious progress in Raiding as Ellaria, was called off due to only about half the people who had accepted showing up, leaving me with absolutely nothing to do for a few hours.

Originally planning to work on my mage a bit more, I bought a couple of heirloom items – a staff and the usual shoulders which are now a flat 10% increase to leveling speed as they now affect quest EXP. Realising I really should get around to getting my neglected little level 7 Warlock to 10, I sent them her way first.

Lowbie Warlock is painful. Spells are expensive, and you can’t lifetap because you will die horribly whilst your imp stands there giggling. But the worst was still to come! Oh yes, painful leveling wasn’t enough. The quest to get your Voidwalker makes you walk your tiny gnome self all the way to the far side of Elwynn and back! -grumble-

One death, a long trip back to Stormwind and a dive into some crypts later, I had my voidy.

It’s so good to have something tanking for me now. I put my first point in Demonology, but I’m not sure I’ll stick with that. I’m not sure I’ll even get this character to 20, since I shipped the heirlooms over to my mage soon after.

By the way, Drain Soul? So much fun. -cough- Better not let Erethia see the souls I gathered from the snow Leopards in Dun Morogh…

Omnom souls.

Eh, and since it’s been a little while, some Heroic Achievements from Ellaria.

I’ve now got around half of the Heroic Achievements on Ellaria. All of these were accidents – we weren’t aiming for them. Gotta Go! was a few days ago, just after the patch. On the rocks was today – we killed him so fast that he only used one tomb, right at the end of the fight. King’s Bane was a total surprise – as I was healing, I wasn’t dispelling Bane like I normally would (Yes, yes, bad healer is bad). I guess he never cast it!

Healing is fun and all, but I’ve decided I’m only going to do it when I really want to, at least as far as HC PUGs are concerned. Going LFG as Damage/Healer is basically the same as going LFG as Healer – no one’s gonna take you as DPS! I’ll heal Nexus and HoS, since those both drop healing items that can be used by any healer, so I can’t justify rolling on the item unless I’m the healer. The other items I need I can DPS those instances, since it’s mail stuff, which will go to me for offspec by default, unless another Shaman sneaks in.

Hopefully I’ll see Naxxramas on Monday, and, though this is even more to ask, stuff will drop. Please?

I’ve been iffy on this since the patch hit. On the one hand, utility! On the other hand, I’m a terrible healer, and dual spec is expensive and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it.

Today, I really, really wanted to give healing a try, so I threw in the towel and bought Dual-Spec, Glyphs, Gems and Enchants for my healing set. Came to about 1.9k total, which made me wince. My gear is an amusing mish-mash of “not fit for heroics” and “from heroics” gear, which seems to balance out well enough. I also had 40 emblems floating around, so I was able to replace two of my worst offenders with a nice Totem and Neck. Still got two nasty green trinkets, though.

Resto Ellaria - lolwut?

First stop was HC Nexus – I’d really like the mace from Keristrasza. Made it through the instance without anyone dying due to having the perfect “newbie healer” party – excellent Paladin tank with a Shadow Priest and Blood DK providing lots of healing to the party. No good for helping me to deal with healing under pressure, but it meant I was able to learn what my spells and talents do, since I’ve never been Resto before.

Me and the Paladin then continued on to UK. I died on the first boss, but that wasn’t my fault… Kinda hard to heal from inside a Frost Tomb, ya know. Aside from that, the instance was uneventful, though the last boss dropped my only upgrade of the night to replace an iLevel 155. Finally, we went to UP.

UP was my first proper test as a healer. The first two bosses are simple, but the third boss, Skadi (The PUG destroyer!) is hellish. Nothing like a long gauntlet with rapidly spawning mobs plus environmental hazards to really test your healer. I somehow managed to keep everyone alive until Skadi arrived, and then live through the fight with him. A DPS died on the boss, but that’s because he was being too friendly with Skadi whilst he was using Whirlwind. Not my fault!

I have to admit, healing was great fun. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I do Enhancement – laser beam heals are cool and all, but give me Bear Hands and Lightning Bolts anyday! – but I’m now confident that I’m at least half decent at healing.

There are some things I need to work on, though.

• Earth Shield – I keep forgetting to refresh this. Classtimers could help if I was constantly targeting tank, but I might still end up missing it. Anyone know of any mods that might help?
• Heroism – As an Enhancer, the best time to use Heroism is just after you summon your wolves, so that they benefit. Thus, in my head, Heroism is inseparable from Feral Spirit, so I just forget to use it. In the Nexus, where I usually use it on three bosses, I remembered on one. In the Utgarde instances it wasn’t so bad as there was an Enhancer doing it for me.
• Tidal Force – I didn’t use this at all tonight. I didn’t need to. In the “OHSHI!” situations on Keri and Skadi, I mashed Nature’s Swiftness and fired off a Healing Wave, which did the trick. I figure this is something I’d use in a situation where I knew a big hit was coming – like a Decimate on Gluth. Pop it just before the decimate, and reap the critty chain heal goodness. But I’m not sure.

Also need to take a look at my Shock and Awe config… it doesn’t like me being resto and constantly goes “-Scrape noise- Missing Weapon Enchants!” and drives me up the wall. -grumble-

Hopefully doing Naxx10 tomorrow, where I will hopefully get a pair of nice bracers, a cloak, and some tier gear. At least one or two of those things would be lovely, please, RNG.

Rilgon's probably gonna kill me for this, but... I like my flying machine more. -cower-

But she is pretty! I’m sort of wishing I’d said to the party “BRB as Hunter” – given we made time with five minutes to spare, we should still have been able to make it even though my DPS would have been lower. Plus, I was only rolling against one other person. Alas, I didn’t think that far ahead.

Speaking of DPS, I was rather pleased with my performance that run. Overall, I was doing nearly 2.8k DPS – the fact I can now afford to use Magma Totems all the time helped greatly, contributing about 700DPS! On bosses, I was doing around 3k without Heroism, and almost 4k with, which is slightly more than last patch.

-

On a more unlucky note, elitist idiots make me laugh. “LFM Naxx10, need full epics link achiev.” Uhhh, what? Ok, link achievement I kinda get – you want people who know what they are doing. Full epics? For the entry level raid? Given Heroic items and Naxx10 items are the same iLevel, anyone who is in full epics doesn’t need upgrades from Naxx, except perhaps a couple tier pieces. As you can guess, I didn’t get an invite to the group, because I’m not full epics.

This is gonna be a long road to Ulduar for me, it seems.

Tried to run Nexus – wanted to get get an idea of how much DPS I could put out. It was looking good, though it’s slightly harder to keep yourself mana neutral on trash. Oh, and the other Enhancer was using Flame Shock, making me cry bitter, bitter tears. So, we get to Kolurg…

And everything… stops. Kind of. Kolurg was mid whirlwind, so he kept going like a Ballerina, and because I’d asked Flame Shock Shammy to take care of Tremor since I had a better SoE totem, we of course didn’t get tremor, and had just aggro’d the entire room, too. But… nothing was happening. No movement, no spells, no sounds… it was bizarre! We could still chat with each other – we expected to be dead when we got back. Amusingly, we weren’t. So, we continued on, naively thinking that would be the only time.

Nope,  happened again at the trash before Telestra… This time, the dungeon reset! All the trash respawned – except the Ice room. So, we fought our way through, no freeze, started Telestra… Freeze. Eventually, we gave up and went to explore the now mobless instance. Since we clearly couldn’t die… I had a bit of fun.

Subterrainian adventure time!

It’s not that exciting, just like a frozen lake, really.

At least I'm not dead.

So, tonight, I learned a lesson. Lern2notinstance on major patch day!

The past two days, I’ve said a sad farewell to my big, woolly Rhino Vetr and my fierce yet slightly camp Devilsaur, Mokelembembe (Moko for short!) In the case of Vetr, it because I’d basically only tamed him for the hilarity that is Rhino Bowling, and since Stampede is being changed in 3.1, I decided to let him go. (In Darnassus. Take that, suckas!)

Since I was replacing him with a wolf, my pet count went from two Ferocity, Two Tenacity, one Cunning to Three Ferocity, one Tenacity and one Cunning. A bit too ferocious, I felt. Besides, since I’d just tamed a new “top DPS” pet (or it will be close in 3.1), I didn’t need Moko anymore, who I’d only tamed for, gasp, DPS. There’s a reason I stopped using him – that’s not how I work. Yes, OK, I said it myself, the wolf is gonna be awesome next patch, but… I like wolves. They are awesome animals. Besides, I figure I’m only going to use him when/if I first start doing Ulduar, give myself as much of an edge as possible without having to use Barney the extremely noisy dinosaur. When I’m comfortable with Ulduar, Erethia will be coming back out of the stables.

So, to replace Moko, I got an… unconventional pet. A serpent, to be precise. Honestly, how many serpents have you seen? One, maybe two? They look awesome, and they are slightly different from other pets I’ve had due to having a ranged attack.

Now, names. Something any good Hunter should take great care with. No offence to people with cats named “Scratch” or anything, but, seriously. What? /slap! Your choices for pet names are deadly serious, or extremely silly, not plain stupid! -shakes fist, then coughs-

The Wolf… Well, the wolf hates me. His name is Cusídhe, which is (amusingly, considering) an Irish-ized version of Cusith, which means “Fairy Dog” (A la Caitsith, Fairy Cat.) Despite Sith being Scottish and Sidhe being Irish, I just like the way Sidhe looks better, to be honest. If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, it’s pronounced Coo-shee. Oh, he’s gonna rip my throat out first chance he gets!

Cusídhe

The snake? The snake has a fun name. First, I want you to look at this screenshot of Trizophenie’s Hunter. Notice the name of his Gorilla? Uh huh. So, can you guess what my snake is called?

If you guessed Trizophenie, you get a cookie.

Muwahaha! -flees-

And, of course, both pets fit into my theme of having white pets. Couldn’t be breaking that now, could I!

In other news, Ellaria has one piece of HC boss gear and one piece of Emblem gear, and then she’ll be raid-ready. I got four upgrades yesterday, and another two today thanks to a lucky if slow HoS run. Most important of todays upgrades is… BEAR HAND!

Yus! Dual Bear Hands ahoy!

Got enough emblems for my Offhand pair to Greed – Pride! Does she look awesome, or does she look omgwtfawesome? I also died a little inside when I managed to complete HoL on Ellaria, yet haven’t on Faulsey. Nature Resist totem, pile under boss (we were just eating the novas), and with Heroism up, we got the achievement for killing him quickly, too. Bah!

Something I’ve noticed on Ellaria is that tanks often forget about us poor melee DPS. I did 10 Man VoA yesterday, which of course has Archavon Fart Clouds to avoid, and in HoS today there’s Maiden with her big void zone things. Both times, the tanks had an alarming tendancy to position the boss so that they were barely out of their own nastiness.

As a melee DPS, we like to be behind the boss so that we don’t lose DPS from parries, which in turn result in more DPS for the boss! So tanks, quit forgetting about the melee until you get parry gibbed, and drag that things ass out of the gunk, or face my Shamanistic Rage!

When Ellaria is fully geared, I’m not really sure what I’m gonna do. I still need some 10-Man Naxx gear on Faulsey before I feel I’d be ready for Ulduar, but at the moment, I can’t really raid. In fact, unless I get a guild that only does one or two raid nights and is happy to do only ten mans, I’m pretty much scuppered. Stupid random work schedule and daft preference for 10 mans!