The Dedicated Few...

Well, last night marked a first for me, and also for a few other of my Concedo Nulli (A-Khadgar-US) (NOW HIRING) colleagues. The Dedicated Few. The achievement wherein 8 people dominate KT and his boys in one raid lockout. No more than 8.

We did this in two raid nights. Knocked out Arachnid and Plague on one night before more of our Ulduar peeps got on. We set up a separate raid night to finish it up. Mind you, we're primarily doing Naxx to help gear up our newest Elemental Shaman, Shasu (who was late to her own raid, btw... <3). Our raid consisted of:

Kreeoni - Druid MT
Tracerec - Pally DPS/OT
Bloodevil - DK DPS/OT
Kathoid - Druid Cat DPS
Sahne - Rogue Healer... i mean.. uhh. DPS
Shasu - Late (ahem) Shaman Ele DPS
Nagrarok - Shammy Healer (my mentor)
Thespia - Yours truly...

We breezed through Construct, one-shotting every boss. I'm always a little nervous to heal Patchwerk because of my level of mana. It was just Nag and I, but I was determined to focus more on LHW and Riptide than Healing Wave. The one issue I'm still struggling with is remembering to keep refreshing Water Shield. As my Intellect goes up, and my Crit% goes up, I'm consuming Water Shield charges more often, so I need to refresh it more. Problem is... when I'm in the thick of it and both Kree and Trace are taking decent damage, I wonder if I'm able to spare the GCD to keep it up. Obviously it'll make me last longer, but could it unintentionally mean death for the tanks. I'll keep working on it.

The fight that we seemed to keep dreading was 4Horse. 8 people: 2 tanks, 2 healers, 4 dps... hmm... Shasu and Thes in the back. Kree on his own, Trace & Nag with Sahne, Kat and Blood. Now, I've been a "healtank" on my priest before, but shields and renew's and Prayer of Mending are great tools to have back there, not to mention Binding Heal. I popped an Earth Shield on Shasu and we pulled. What I didn't take into account is because I was taking damage, my Water Shield was consuming charges faster than normal, which meant that my mana was reloading faster. Made healing back there a total breeze. She used her Earth Elemental in the beginning, and I still had mine on reserve. Everyone came back to help us shortly thereafter and we were golden! Phew! I was glad to have that fight over.

Sapphiron... psh... easy mode.

KT... well... It was a really rough pull. I understand that we're low on ranged DPS, but I hate having to throw lightning bolts at the Banshees and burning through mana in the 1st phase. I'll throw a couple, but I need to save my mana to make sure people stay alive. We had 4 Banshees up as KT became active. Got them all down, I think Trace died. Once we got everything down, the rest of the fight really couldn't have been better. We were communicating... everyone was pretty focused.

At the end of the night, it was just a FUN environment. Stressful maybe at times, but definitely fun. Hopefully, my next post will be about creating and maintaining a fun (but not sloppy) raid environment. Until next time...

Shaman Totem Mechanics and PvP

There's a lot of discussion going on about how the Totem mechanics are designed to function. According to MMO-Champion, the devs believe that it's fundementally important to know when and where to drop our totems. I have to say I do agree with this. One of the things that kept drawing me to roll a shaman was the cool totems that I got to throw on the ground. And, if I may play favorites for a moment, I think the Draenei totems look SO much cooler! ^_^

Anyways...

They don't want the range on totems to be so big that it just seems like another raid-wide buff. That defeats the purpose of the totem. Then there's the other issue that it takes too long to set and reset totems. I mentioned this earlier in a fight like Emalon where the tanks CAN take a lot of damage right off the bat. I like the proposed idea of dropping all the totems on one GCD, or perhaps taking totems off the GCD all together.

With regard to wanting totems to be removed from the game, I'll answer with this: roll another class. If you want buffs that will stay on no matter where you are, roll a pally/druid/priest. Except for Tree Form buff and Pally Aura buff, all of those classes don't require a distance minimum. I, for one, like totems and needing to have them set up right. It's another challenge.

PvP.

Burst damage is too high. It's *somewhat* difficult to get decent resilience gear to last in an arena fight. Arenas are too fast....

These are all arguments being made.

1.) Burst Damage - Yes, I feel it's a little too high. As a healer (I do arenas on my 880-resilience disc priest), sometimes you wonder how it's even possible to survive when a 2-dps 2's team blow all their cooldowns on you at once. Although that is smart playing, there needs to be a way to combat it. One match: Trees, Mage Clones, Starfall, Water Elemental....all on me at once. I popped stoneform, PW:S, Pain Suppression, Renew, and my PvP trinket all at once. The only reason I survived is because when we faced them again, I knew it was coming. The first time, I didn't have enough time to react and I was dead in about 3 seconds. As for arenas being too fast. Then there you go. However, I like the adrenaline rush. Otherwise, I'd just go do BGs all day. =)

2.) Gear - Arenas are harder. Hence, better gear should come from them. BGs are easy (and even easier to be a moron in), so why should they potentially give good gear from them? Too often do I step into WSG and while me and a tank are going for the flag while the other 8 people in the BG are in the middle trying to farm honor kills. Unless they can reward more honor or extra marks of honor for actually winning the BG the way it's supposed to be won (helping cap towers, capturing flags, etc). They combatted the AFKing a decent amount, but how can they combat stupidity? Why should someone fighting in the road between Blacksmith and Stables be rewarded the same as me for actually capping those nodes? Unless they make HKs irrelevant unless you're within a certain "buff zone" of the flag.

Burning for Flame Leviathan

I'm a healer. I like to heal. Some people hold issue with the "whack-a-mole" nature of healing, but I prefer to call it the "aggressive reaction" style of healing. Yes, I use Grid. Yes, I tend to keep an eye on Grid more than the actual screen, but isn't that the job of a healer? It's my job to keep a close eye on my raid's health bars to make sure they're topped up at all times.

So, why did I even choose healing? I like the spontaneity of it. I like knowing that without me or the other healers, we don't stand a chance. I've single-healed/two-manned Heigan the Unclean twice. Once with a tank, and the other with a ret pally. The ret pally does have plate, but he was still taking some pretty big hits, not having defense or avoidance ratings. My point is not to say that healers are the Old Gods' gift to the World (of Warcraft), but that we play a really crucial role that is RARELY the same from encounter to encounter. I like dipping back into DPS from time to time, but I really do think Healing is one of the most exciting roles in the game for me. I've done melee dps, I've done caster dps, and I've done healing on two classes. The only "role" I have left to really sink into is tanking.

Last night was my first run at Flame Leviathan with my other guild, Team Sport on Nazjatar. Having never set foot into Ulduar yet, I didn't know what to expect. I knew that tanks and vehicles were involved, but I didn't know that the only opportunity for healing was to role-play a "Last Crusade"-esque Harrison Ford with a Sean Connery in the sidecar of my little chopper (Sorry, Dralo, I know that you thought we were all saying Demolisher). Although I really do enjoy the style of the Leviathan fight, I feel it's a misrepresentation of what's to come. I was kind of disappointed that I really only had 2 spells at my disposal: Sonic Cone or Tar (I believe they're both called). It was a nice little ego boost to down Leviathan, the first boss in Ulduar, but I really wanted to test my real healing skills.

As I said, it's a fun fight, and it's definitely something different, but I was certainly hoping to say the fight was a success thanks to my perfectly-timed nuke-heal saving the day!!

The Blogging Community...

So, I had a conversation with Brigwyn over at The Hunting Lodge about joining more into the blogging community of WoW. As I said in my first post, I haven't really been able to find options when it comes to Shaman blogs. So, here I am. I will be working on getting an RSS feed up so people can follow more closely. I hope to also join the ranks of Twisted Nether at some point. Hopefully my extensive healing background will be sufficient to make a dent over there.

As for now, it's off to work.... and planning my next post...

Sartharion + (N)One

Tonight was the first attempt at Sarth1D. I've done this fight on my priest before, but with the shaman is a whole new experience for me. Again, we're 2-healing it. I remember needing 3 healers just to do normal Sarth. Even though I was late for the raid (stupid work), Nag wasn't there tonight. Shit. The normal raiding crew was there for the most part. A new hunter I've never seen before who left halfway through the raid, and a priest. Okay... well, maybe the priest will MT heal tonight (Apparently in my mind, all priests are discipline). *BUZZER* wrong. He whispers me before the first attempt "you wanna MT heal?", and I think I crapped my pants.

Kree does Sarth1D a little different than I'm used to, which is totally fine. I'm fluffing his ego here a bit, but he's a damn good tank. One of the best I've ever healed. He tanks Sarth AND Tenebron. Like I said, I've never seen that before. Luckily, the priest new to help me out on Kree since he was going to be taking double the damage.

Now for my favorite part of groups where I don't know everyone in it... the flame walls. One particular member that I'll call "Honda" got hit. Every. Single. Time. Not only do I have to heal them, but I have to heal them THROUGH a dot. I kept watching my mana bar go lower and lower. Popped my mana tide totem and kept going. I think we could've done it if the DPS knew where to focus....

...one attempt had DPS still focused on Sarth while Kree and the heavy hitters were on Tenebron, so Sarth got pulled and wiped us. Another attempt had us just trying to burn down Sarth and then take care of Tenebron later, but adds started piling up, and dear GOD I can't heal through those. It's so sad to watch Grid stay the same as I'm spamming chain heal. Then the really interesting thing kept happening. I was staying alive longer than the other healer. The priest (in t7.5 I think) kept dying!! I'm not sure if he couldn't stay out of the flame walls or something, or pulled too much healing aggro on the adds. *shrug* Not too much we can do.

I think after about 3 attempts, we as the defacto "officers" decided to just go for Sarth minus Tenebron. Even at that, "Honda" kept just sitting back and getting hit by flame wave...

No gear dropped for me tonight... I'm hoping for some sweet healer legs pretty soon. I also got the Cowl of Sheet Lightning off of Thaddius in Naxx10 the night before. Yes I know it's a clothpiece, but it's better than my blue. It's got decent mp5 and other stats I need. Still need to figure out what to gem it with. I also need to start grinding rep so I can get Arcanums and Shoulder Inscriptions. That should help a bit, fo sho!!

Did a UP run after Sarth which was pretty smooth. I'm having fewer and fewer mana issues, which is great. Now I need to keep getting my heals cranked up higher!!

Sleep is upon me. G'night world.... of warcraft.

The First Chapter: Head first into Naxxramas

I've been 80 for about a minute. I never played Resto up until that moment. Yet, Tuesday night, I was one of TWO healers for 10man Naxx. Even my first time on my Disc Priest, we had three healers. I had with me the H-Nexus War Mace of Unrequited Love, the Heroism Emblem Healing Shield, and probably two lower-end purples. At this point, I was lucky to get my spell power to 1500, which is the globally known starting point for running heroics. (FYI, if you don't have 1500 spellpower, or a good group of friendly guildmates to run with, I'd recommend doing the higher lvl 80 regular instances. Use that opportunity to get your rep up.) Anyways..

5ish hours, 2 nights, 10 people... full clear FTW!

The other healer with us was Nagrarok, an Ulduar10 geared Shaman. My initial reaction is that Shamans are normally raid healers, so some of the tank-heavy fights we might have a tough time. However, I realized that this is not the case like it was back in BC. I remember BC days meant Shaman MT healers went OOM very fast. When we just had to focus on one or two people, the fight went a lot smoother. Earth Shield my target, Riptide to pad them up, and then Healing Wave if anything really needed to be done. AoE dmg and I whipped out my massively underpowered Chain Heal. (Like I said... 1500 spell power LoL). I personally think that Nag was my saving grace in this raid, and hopefully I can return the favor at some point.

Preceded by an awesome live rendition of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight", we stepped into Spider Wing:

• Anub'Rehkan - I'm used to one MT healer, and one Raid/OT healer. Since Shaman Totems don't stack with each other, Nag threw down Healing Stream, and I had Mana Springthrew down. He threw Flametongue, and I threw down Searing...some of our group was a little on the underside, so my extra 46.x dps could be the deciding factor! /sarcasm off. The locust swarm proved to be easier than I originally thought. Priest can Shield, PoM, and Renew the tank. I've got Riptide, Earth Shield, and can stop for a Healing Wave along the way. I've been very impressed with the range of a Shaman Healer, compared to my Priest.
• Grand Widow Faerlina - This fight was cake. Instead of Mana Spring, I opted for Cleansing Totem to save mana on all the poison dispels that happen in this fight. Nag dropped Mana Spring. If you haven't noticed, your mana regen is crucial, so ALWAYS focus on having Water Shield up.
• Maexxna - Fight was even more cake. Luckily the only real challenge is the enrage at 30%. Since the raid-wide wrapping will still happen through that, make sure you have Earth Shield and Riptide up. Line your buffs up (BoWisdom, etc) so you can have your cleansing totem down. The healing poison that gets put up on the tank can be pretty wicked. I'd rather save my mana for keeping him topped off rather than using the GCD for a Cleanse.

Then came Plague Quarter:

• Noth the Plaguebringer - Your main job is going to be cleansing curses. If these things tick down to zero, it can make your life not-so-happy. Otherwise, tank and spank. If your group is lacking in dps, then be sure you're conserving mana. The more waves of adds you have to go through, the more dmg they do. There are certain mobs that will run into your group and do an arcane blast-like explosion. Too many of these can wipe the raid. I always consider this the "de facto enrage timer".
• Heigan the Unclean - All you really need to know is keep your cleansing totem between the stage and where the tank is going to be kiting the boss during Phase 1. This will keep the disease off both the casters/healers and the melee on the ground.
• Loatheb - In all honesty, one of my favorite fights as a healer. This fight is ALL about you. There's no avoidable damage, and he hits like a sissy girl. "Necrotic Aura" is really the boss you're fighting. It's a debuff that restricts all healing done for a set amount of time (I believe ~16 seconds). Then, once the debuff wears off, you have roughly 3 seconds to get as much healing out as you can. The raid takes dmg over time, so everyone is going to need heals. I set up a Riptide on the lowest target before the debuff wears off. Time a Chain Heal to go off right after the debuff faded, then pop another riptide after that, and maybe throw in a Lesser Healing Wave for good measure. Make sure you're getting the buff from the spores, cause those are going to increase your throughput HUGELY!

That's only my impressions from the first two wings of Naxx. In my next post, I'll go through my thoughts on healing through Military, Construct, and Frostwyrm Lair. If there's more you'd like to know, simply leave a comment!

A Decent Resto Blog?

So, maybe you're like me. You have a Shaman. You love your shaman. You leveled your shaman from 1-80 as Enhancement. More armor, more agility, Maelstrom heals. Win. Now, you're 80. You're raiding. Yet, you're resto. What the hell do you do??

Well, that's why I'm here. And, that's exactly what I did. I'm a nice guy. I like to help out. I'm in a fantastic new guild (tho we're still building our raiding core), and I decided to go Resto to help everyone out.

The first thing I'll touch on in the next post are the basic principles of stats that you should be aiming for. Also, I'll give some advice on where to get some gear from either professions or heroics.. Rep items will come with time, but I'll put my two cents in there as well. And of course, discussion is always appreciated. I'm hoping this will be a great place for Shamans (cause I will be starting an enhancement section as well) to come and learn more about our class.