The Twisty!

1 glass (shot, wine, goblet, flagon, keg, whatever, we’re all alcoholics here, right?)

1 fantastically fantastic bottle of Jack Daniels.  For fun, the Honey version is spiffy, even my wife likes that.  If you do the honey, but aren’t a fan of Jack – try Wild Turkey’s American Honey – OMG.

Pour to about halfway.  Stop.. hammer time!  Grab a lemon or orange, whichever you prefer.  If you use the Honey, I recommend lemon.  If you went au naturale, go go lemon ranger!  Cut you a slice of fruit and SQUEEZE that mofo in there.  You can use the pre-bottled lemon juice you find, but your wife may give you the look.  O.O

Fill the rest of the cup/gallon jug/keg up.  If you fill up the keg with a bottle of Jack.. you are a magician and will be the friggin MAN (or WOMAN!) come FRAT PARTY time and OMG what are you doing here, go make money!

Sip the thing during a raid.  If someone calls out LEFT and you should be heading RIGHT.. drink the rest of it.  If you hit rocket jump and fall off the side of a cliff.. gulp that thing down.  If you ACCIDENTALLY kill the BOSS.. well, you know where this is going.

WHAT A TWIST!    I dunno, I just had to say that.  So there you have it!  What kind of drinks are you guys rockin’?

- Aly

I think I need an adult beverage.  It’s past 11 am, right?  Right?!

For as long as I’ve been playing any sort of multiplayer game, be it a board game (Curse you, Monopoly!) a console game or an online game like Quake (gah, I’m showing my age) – there will always be emotional investment.  Monopoly as an example.  Stress and anxiousness when first starting, to get properties before other people do, maintain a good cash supply.  Excitement and elation at being handed money from the poor schmuck that landed on your hotel property.  Anger, resentment and embarrassment at being the poor schmuck.  Sounds silly?  Maybe, but next time you play, keep an eye out, it’s there.

Monopoly is Srs Bsns. (Check out http://threewordphrase.com, great comic!)

Anger in a video game seems silly when you say it out loud.  It’s a video game for cryin’ out loud!  But we all know that MMO’s and online games are definitely more than just pixels.  These are people with interact with on a daily basis.  Like Coworkers you like.  Or don’t like, as the case may be.  Maggie from accounting, I’m pointing at you!  *shakes fist!*

I asked a friend of mine what comes to mind for her when I talk about Raid Rage.  Immediately and without hesitation, her response is “Asshole Raid Leaders”.   I had a feeling I knew what she was talking about, but I wanted her to expand on it a bit, so, throwing caution (and my eardrums) to the wind, I asked her what she meant.

“You know, the person, usually a guy, who leads the raid with an iron fist.  Tells you where to be, where to stand, what to do at all times.  Leaves you no free will to do anything you want to do.  Yells at you if you’re not where you should be, yells if you aren’t doing what you shouldn’t be doing, is critical of your performance and calls you out in raid.”  She gave a classic example:

Nobody likes to be yelled at.  Well, most people don’t anyways, there’s always the exception.  From the bad feelings that it creates, the tension and the stress to both the person on the receiving end and the people that happen to be in the group too, it’s just bad news all around.  While it seems fairly dramatic, this is actually a decent demonstration of Raid Rage.  FULL ANGERTUDE AT MAXIMUM THRUST GO!  *FWOOSH!*  annnnnd flamed.

But in all seriousness, seems kinda overkill, right?  But I got to thinking.  I’ve been in some serious raids, and even been lucky enough to be in a raidgroup that accomplished 8/8 Heroic Dragonsoul.  I’ve also been in a raiding group that couldn’t manage to come together half the time, and when we DID raid, it was awful.  People everywhere, healers dpsing, dps tanking, tanks doing I don’t know wtf.  What was the difference?  A strong raid leader, some ground rules, and people showing up for the right reasons.  Now I’m not going to say you have to be like Dude from the Moar Dots video to lead a good raid.  Far from it.  But sometimes you have to be a little tough.  I was reading a post about this subject by Cameron Sorden that talks about this in great length.

“I was thinking about this because we had a situation this weekend in Karazhan where someone got a little hot under the collar from the tone and warnings of our raid leader. He was slightly undergeared, a little inexperienced, and he messed up a few times. When he did, our raid leader told him what he was doing wrong (using slightly colorful language). You could tell from his voice that this player was frustrated and a little embarrassed. You could probably also tell those things from when he made a comment about the raid being like living in a Machiavellian state. While a lot of people would just be damn impressed that a World of Warcraft player not only knew but used the word “Machiavellian,” I thought it was more interesting that he was kind of correct.

One of the central ideas of Machiavellian theory is that cruel actions are sometimes necessary for leaders and that good can come of them. What characteristics should necessary cruelty have? “It must be swift, effective, and short-lived.” Yelling at someone in vent is fast, informative, and it has just enough sting to motivate you not to mess up again. A raid leader’s job isn’t to hold your hand, dry your tears, and give you a cookie to make you feel better. It’s to get the raid done as quickly and efficiently as possible, with minimal snags, minimal drama, and minimal wipes. Nobody likes a six-hour raid, and that’s exactly what you have when people are making mistakes. Especially on raids that your guild has on farm status.”

WHY WERE YOU STANDING IN THE FIRE AGAIN ALY, DO YOU WANT TO DIE?! AHHHHH!

Is raid raging necessary?  I think so, to a degree.  Some of my best performances have come from some very candid honesty about my playstyle, in vent, and it forced me to admit to myself that maybe I am, indeed, doing something wrong and fix it.  There’s a reason when you go through Basic Training, you have a Drill Sergeant.   It screws your head on straight so you’ll be prepared when you go out in the field.  Do you have to be an assface to your raiding team?  Hell no, and if you were, I wouldn’t want to be around you.  The loudness of your yelling does NOT equal the amount of respect I give you.   People respect a good raid leader.  They do not respect a loud one.  Unless you’re Gilbert Gottfried, but that’s another story.  O.o

Wow, anyways, writing this post in about 20 different sittings really got me way off in left field.  The point is, keep cool with yourself and others.  Be firm when you need to be, but do it right.  Be mindful of the situation.  If your raiding group is doing a first attempt on a boss and it all goes to hell, don’t get all bent out of shape.  Talk about what happened, talk strategy and work on it.   If you’re on try 20 and it’s all sloppy – it’s OK to sprinkle some salt on the conversation, especially if you can prove your point and it’s a point that will help the raid in a meaningful way.  Don’t take it to legendary levels.. if you’re like the Moar Dots dude, maybe you might want to consider dropping it down a notch.. your raiders ears will thank you for it.  If you struggle with that, some groups have designated role leads – a healing lead, dps lead, tank lead, etc – consider a setup where other people are empowered to help you.

On a side note, above all else,  enjoy yourself and the game.  This comment is for people who are frustrated with their situation in their guild, raiding team, whatever.  If something isn’t working out for you and you’ve tried to change the situation and nothing is happening, it’s alright to go do something else. If you’re just not enjoying the people you’re with or the things you’re doing in game.. don’t hang out in a bad situation because you feel like you have to.  You don’t mesh with a group of people, it’s ok to find a group you do mesh with.  Things change and in the end, it’s just a game, right?  And we play them to have fun, not stress.  That’s what Maggie in Accounting is for.  *shakes fist*

Keep calm and Lok’tar Ogar.

- Aly

So writing my next post is turning out a little more difficult than I thought, so taking a break to write about something else.  Brain freeze?  Maybe.. gotta have one first, right?

I was talking with a friend of mine during our LFR runs the other day and we were talking about old content.  Two of our guildies regularly raid Ulduar which I think is fantastic.  I love Ulduar.  A lot.  One of my all-time favorite Raids!   The Bosses are varied and plentiful.  The building architecture is gorgeous, and the story buildup to even get IN Ulduar was fun and interesting.  Titan technology and history in this game is fantastic.   She asked me what my favorite newer (t13 and above) raid was.  Firelands was my answer, but I didn’t feel as strongly about it as I do Ulduar.  It’s a big area, lots of movement, the fights are still fun and varied and Rag Heroic STILL gives people a lot of trouble.

But my favorite fight was Alysrazor.

The prospect of flying around in the air after a GIANT FIREBIRD OF DOOM, hitting rings and all the while still cycling through all your damage abilities – dodging, flying in 3d, chasing and then landing and dodging GIANT FIRE TORNADOES OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION just gets me all excited.  In my pants.   Indeed.

“Did you know,” she said, casually, “that you could probably solo her now?” WHYNOIDIDNOTSIGNMEUPOMGHOW?  

Sure enough, theres’s videos as early as pre-MOP of shadow priests, hunters, paladins, balance druids and warlocks soloing my giant firebird.  She’s mine.  She shares my name and everything.    Besides, hearing “Wanna go down Aly?” leads to some interesting conversation.  “Not on the first date, I’m not that kind of whatever I am.”  I dunno.  Actually, come to think of it, I probably would, I’m a slut like that. 

Have you HEARD some of the Female Goblin flirting!? o.O  I challenge you to not think so too.

So that was my goal last night.  I packed off to a zone I haven’t been to since 4.3.  Old familiar territory, but this time I came as a goblin.  The last time I was in Firelands, I was on the Alliance side as a human.  Ah nostalgia!

I entered ol’ firebucket’s castle o’ terrors and was immediately greeted by the druids who stood in wait for the next batch of heroes to come conquer the place.  I mounted up and hopped off the side, hitting my float in mid-jump to catch some air.  Aggroing mobs is always a possibility as you’re riding through, make sure to give a wide a birth as you can around each of the packs.   Once I got to Alysrazor’s area, I switched over to my Holy spec.  As it turns out, it’s super-helpful for mitigating the adds’ damage as they come after you while the large firebirds are warming up to blast you with their FIREY BLAST OF…. WHATEVER THEY HAVE!   Consider mouthwash, guys? 

As the two fire birds start shooting, you want to start moving close to their breath, the mobs will trail behind you – as will the breath.  Let the breath take the mobs out, keep moving over to the first egg pile and let it do its thing.  Eventually, the piles are down and you can move to one of the two birds.  They just keep on shooting! I kept a tight circle around one of the birds until it was dead, then moved to the last.  He just kept hitting himself. 

Pure awesome.

  Switched back to shadow spec and took my flask.  My palms were sweaty.  I was nervous.  Well wouldn’t you be?  GIANT FIREBIRD OF DEATH!  or doom.  One of the two.  But it wasn’t really that so much as being nervous like meeting a friend you hadn’t seen in a few years.  Would she remember me?  Would the encounter go smoothly?  As it turns out.. yes, yes she remembered me and no the encounter did not go smoothly.  She was mad.  I forgot to send her a birthday card.  >_>     Kidding aside, the video below makes it look easy, but there ARE some hangups to the fight.  She does randomly despawn on you from time to time.  Doing that while in the air is risky – you lose your feathers immediately and fall to the ground.  You know how there’s always skeletons on the ground after a raid wipe?  Green splats. bleh.  My best recommendation if you’re going to attempt this is bring patience.  If you haven’t done this fight in a while, it’ll take a little re-learning.  Once you get up in the air, re-mastering movement while dodging fireblasts and dpsing can be a bit tricksy, hobbitses.  If you end up having to dps her after she starts the tornados, if you have a rolling heal ability like renew or rejuv, make sure you throw it on yourself and use a mitigation cooldown to limit the damage being done to you.  Don’t stand too close to the wall of fire at the entrance, the birds will aggro you.

In the end, Goblin stands triumphant.  It took a few attempts, but I was able to get her down before she got back up to do a second phase.  I didn’t get the cool mount she drops.. but I’ll be back to try it again next week.   What a refreshing change from the dailies grind!  I got to see a boss I really enjoy, exercise my raid awareness and dps rotation and got some gold and loot to boot!  Plus, the guildies are in awe of my mad shadow skills…. mwahahaha!

My takeaway?  Try doing something outside the norm! WoW gets boring if you log in to do the same things over and over again.  I hate dailies for that reason.  Visit old dungeons though.  Relive some of that nostalgia!  Kara was another favorite of mine and the first boss drops an awesome mount too.   I’d love to hear what you guys enjoy doing outside of current content!   What do you do to get away from it all?  

Next post:  Raid Rage.  RARRRRR!   

Digging A Deep Well of Depression

I don’t tend to express my feelings well, and they are certainly not something that I like to throw out onto my blogging. They are mine and I like them stuck in my head where they can wreak havock…apparently that is an “unheathly” way of looking at things.  You see I’d spent the better part of 2 years planning a wedding, which is A LOT of work, and also a HUGE distraction from what’s really going on in your life. So…after the wedding was over and I no longer had the burden joy of planning and making sure things went right, I was smacked in the face with the realization that I was in a very crappy job, being paid next to nothing, with no benefits and it was costing me almost as much in gas to get there as I was making. I was depressed, which as a newly wed is even more depressing. I quit my horrible job, with the plans of using my savings to hold us over until I could find a job.

What felt like forever later, really it was only a little over a month, my wonderful father in law told me that his job was hiring. I would be working in a retail pharmacy call center…BUT I would be making pretty good money. MUCH better than I was previously making at least, with…wait for…BENEFITS. In my adult life I’ve never had a job that gave me benefits. /cry

But What About Gaming?

So the funny horrible thing about depression is, you don’t want to do anything, you also don’t want to tell your friends whats going on cause then you’d have to talk about it, and that certainly not what friends are for…(read: SARCASM)

So I had this whole I don’t want to do anything, plus my raiding team was falling apart, and in general things weren’t going well. Which compounded the issue.

So there I sat in my gaming room, with ALL the time in the world, cause I was unemployed, and I just watched TV. I feel like that should have been a really big warning light for me, but it wasn’t. My husband would ask if everything was ok, and I would say YEAH! I play normal REALLY REALLY well.

World of Warcraft didn’t appeal to me, League of Legends brought me no happiness, I was even getting irritated with the tabletop game that I played with my IRL friend.

So What Happened?

Now I work 40 hours a week min, doing a job I thought I would hate, but I love. I get to help people that are in pain, and the associates that I work with are wonderful. Plus I have an amazing Supervisor! I get paid a living, something I can survive off of, and slowly…very slowly I’m getting back to me. I imagine that sometime soon I will be able to get back to gaming, and get back to writing, but until then I must say thank you to everyone that has stuck by me through this whole mess.

/Cheers!

-Aunaka

Browsing through howtopriest.com, I came across an interesting post that discusses a healing strategy for Shadow Priests for the Tsulong fight.  For those of you who aren’t there just yet, Tsulong is a two-part fight – Night time and Day time.  During the Night time, he’s considered a boss and is attackable. RAR Shadow dragon!  Seems everyone wants in on the shadow action.  It’s pretty attractive, and SLIMMING!  /pose.

What?    Then there’s day phase.  Day phase is an interesting beast – Tsulong becomes healable, the objective is to heal him to 100% by the end of the fight – something akin to the Valithria Dreamwalker encounter (http://www.wowwiki.com/Valithria_Dreamwalker) in ICC for those of you who were playing in Wrath. Ohh interesting mechanics, how I adore thee!

The fight literally hinges on how ubersauce your healers are. Luckily, during the day, he helps your healers out by breathing on them if they’re standing in front of him – Sun Breath, which gives a buff called “Bathed in the Light” – gives them 25% of their mana back and increases healing done by 500%.  Side note:  If you have a Shaman healer, their mastery will shine on this fight and will pull some massive wtfhealing on the boss, especially during the first day phase since Tsulong starts out at low health. More on this found here!  If you hear that noise, it’s the sound of shaman cheering for a fight that goes in their favor for a change.. for once.  I’m not bitter.  More of a lemony taste.  LEMONS ARE AWESOME DON’T YOU BELIEVE THE HYPE!

Tsulong has an 8 minute enrage timer, which roughly allows for two total day phases and three night phases which means healers need to PUSH during the day phases.  DPS can’t slouch either, because any Unstable Sha that reach Tsulong hit him and do a pretty sizeable chunk of damage to him, setting your healers back and likely causing an aneurism.

“So Aly,” you ask, raised eyebrow in the air, “when do we get to the good part?”  The veritable caramel nougat in the center of the chocolate that is defeating this boss. I hear ya! Keep your shorts on, please!  I’m eye level and that’s distracting! O.o

I raid with my guild, Twisted, in a 10-man raid.  So for Tsulong, our setup was 2 tanks, 4 healers and 4 dps.  Yep, you read that right. We’re 4 healin’ this mofo!  Let me explain.  By going holy and wearing my healing gear,  I can actually dps the boss in Holy Word: Chastise mode during the Night Time transition – throwing shadow word:pain and using mindbender, Holy fire and Smite, and pull decent numbers!  If you look here I actually almost hit 50kdps overall, just for dpsing during the night phase.  Single-target shadow damage may pull ahead a bit, but where this setup REALLY shines is during the Day phase.  Because I’m set for healing (Don’t forget to switch to Chakra: Serenity!) I actually do more good healing the boss than attacking mobs during day phase.

Shadow priests can attest, they get low numbers during day phase because most of their damage comes from dots – that don’t have enough time to work because the Unstable Sha spawns have to be brought down quickly.  Mindblast, spikes and flay.  Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have ourselves a NICHE! 

Our healing T14 2 piece actually comes in handy for this fight too. Switch your Chakra to Serenity during day phase, get that renew rolling and go to town! Make sure you hit Holy Word: Serenity on cooldown and right before Tsulong breathes to increase your critical spell chance. 2 Flash heals and a Greater heal paired with for some sweet output with the Serenity , especially after getting the Bathed in the light buff. If you have Mindbender for mana regen, you can still sic that pet on the giant Embodied Terror!  BAM! or BLAM!  Blammo?  Kersplat!  There we go.

We usually reserve our Heroism/Bloodlust for right after the first breath – combine that with Guardian Spirit (a 60% healing increase for 10 seconds, woot!) on Tsulong and you’ve got some sweet healing on Tsulong, making the fight a cakewalk.  You can also bounce Cascade off of him during the day phase, healing him and your group for some nice aoe heals.  We’re also a prime choice for dispelling Tsulong when he gets hit with Terrorize.  Dispel that immediately, 2% per second damage to Tsulong is bad.  If you didn’t, I demand you find a DeLorean, ramp up that 88 mph and bust out some major 1.21 gigawatts of awesome!  Or maybe just don’t forget to dispel.   It’s important.. like a walk on the beach with your mom to discuss those not so fresh feelings in the morning. Like the best part of waking up is Folger’s in your cup.  Or even like it’s important DPS doesn’t let the sha adds touch Tsulong.  Speaking of..

For DPS during the daytime, we usually break the stage up into 4 quadrants we assign to our 4 dps.  If one of the quadrants is empty, the person in the empty quadrant moves to help another DPS out.  Keeps things from being confusing and helps to keep the Unstable Sha from reaching the boss.

If you have Vuhdo as your addon of choice, I recommend creating a Private Tank tab and /focusing Tsulong.  During the day phase, you can treat him like a member of your raid and use your normal heal bindings to heal him.

Well there you have it!  Not sure what it is.. but there you go!  Tomorrow is patch day and another exciting raiding tier is upon us.  The Thunder King Comes!  What are you looking forward to with this new patch?  Personally, I can’t wait to try out Ra-Den, the Heroic only Titan Watcher boss!

- Aly

I had my first opportunity to DPS for my raid.  Scary proposition in itself, I’ve been a healer for a long .. long.. (did I mention long?) time.  Disc atonement healing doesn’t count!  Setting up my UI and borrowing from my healing gear was an interesting prospect.  Despite what anyone says, healing gear does not a dps set make.  Seems like Disc and Holy are fairly interchangeable this expansion – Spirit, Crit/Mastery, with as little Haste as possible is what I’ve been rocking and doing spiffy with.

Shadow priests are backwards! O.o  Favoring haste to a plateu and then crit and mastery, my gear was ALL wonky!   So after an hour or so of equipment evaluation, regemming and reforging (ohhhh the struggle to magic up haste), I hit the road and got warmed up by queing up for a LFR.  Throwin’ myself to the wolves!  Mom always said “if’n y’gonna do somethin’, go all in!”.  Or was it “Hey you, with the face, get outta my coffee!”?  I forget.  Anyways, my first experience was kind of a flop and I feel bad for the people in my LFR.  Dots flying willy nilly, mind sears all over the place.. It went something along the lines of “Hey! I’m missing cooldown buttons, I need to move my bars, where’s my notifications, this button goes here AHH A BOSS IS HITTING ME move dispersion here ah poogas, I’m dead.”.  My Takeaway?  Holy heck, you have a lot to keep track of as a Shadow Priest!

For those of you who don’t know me, I enjoy reading the HECK out of forums.  Literally.  The whole heck.. not just half of it.  My usual stop of www.plusheal.com wasn’t really sufficient for the shadowy goodness that comes with being a shadow priest, but they came through again – a regular there, Derevka of Tales of a Priest fame also helps with another site, HowtoPriest.  Boy was I blown away!  The guys there have put together a literal treasure trove of information about all three specs there too.  I found an excellent post by Woaden there entitled Shadow Raiding: the Primer, 5.1 edition.  It’s like they knew I was coming!

I also found a few interesting videos.  A regular watcher of the Youtubes, I came across a playlist entitled Preach Gaming which had a pretty spiffy video on getting started as a shadow priest, or spriest, or spriesty, or whatever we happen to be called nowadays.  Fresca? I dunno.  Anyways, he also covers other classes and can be pretty fun to watch or at least listen to.  Can’t meet a more outgoing guy.   If you’re not into reading, I recommend giving this video a watch at least, especially if you’re considering keeping a shadow offspec.

So, having brushed up a bit on my Spriesting, I jumped back in the game, but this time in my actual raiding group.  BZOW!  Well, it wasn’t as life changing as that, but I felt a bit more confident and it showed in my dps.  It helped that I had a patient team who was willing to wait a few while I fine-tuned my ui after fights. Felt like I was making my date wait for me while I was styling my hair. /fluff fluff.

It also helped to get a good tracking timer (like Shadow Timer or Weak Auras.. I’m actually still experimenting) and arranging my toolbars (thank you to Bartender and the people that make it!) so I can quickly see what needs to be cast next helps so much.  Preach talks about why he doesn’t choose Divine Insight along with FD;CL because of how the cooldowns sometimes co-incide, but having mindspike and mind blast right there helps me track it well enough that when each proc, I seem to get the most of it.  Personal preference, but I thought I’d throw that out there.

Anyways, enough of my rambling for now.

Have you guys ever been asked to step out of your comfort zone and DPS for your raid team?  How much prep work did you have to go through and what did you do to get ready for it?  I’d love to see what you guys use for your references!

True story.

I got started in the realm of MMO’s with little game called Everquest, back in the ol’ 2001.  The good ol’ days where you get plopped in a starter city with not so much as a crash course popup on how to play or where to go.  I’ve always tended to gravitate towards pew pew classes.  I’m hopeless with Melee classes as my wife will attest, and nothing feels more satisfying than blowing things up from afar.  I dunno, maybe it’s the pyro in me.

Anyways, that carried over to World of Warcraft back when I started.   I leveled up a Mage as my first “main” character just as I started out with a Wizard and a Magician in EQ.  I entered BC Raiding with her, proud to contribute to the community of Explody.  At the time, our guild was hurting for healers and the raid leader would oftentimes spend more either looking for a healer, or cajoling one of the dps to fill the spot (like pulling TEETH).  If we were lucky, the dps would run off to switch specs and come back, grumbling.   Me being the magey mage that I was, was happy to not have a healing spec to switch out of.  Seriously.  “Who wants to heal?!” *the group takes a step back, save for the poor afk bastige*.    At one point, I turned to my wife (who even back then enjoyed stabbing all the things) and pondered: “Wife!” I would exclaim, “why don’t you heal for us?”.

So after I picked myself back up off the floor, I asked myself why I never gave it a try.  Deep down I think I already knew.  It’s a responsibility.  It’s not blowing things up.  It’s not easy.  It’s not fun.

Boy was I wrong.  At least about the fun part.

I decided I’d finish leveling my druid, who wasn’t really that far behind.  I’d already started collecting dps gear, since I was trying out Boomkin at the time (anybody remember Panzerkins?!  I miss the heck out of that!)

I finished it up and went back to playing mage for a while (Shiny keys syndrome or maybe I was just putting off healing.  I like to blame it on Shiny .. shiny keys.)  A friend of mine asked me to tag along with him on my druid for some loot since I hadn’t really done any heroics yet.  I grabbed my druid and hopped into Shadow Labs with him.  We were doing ok for a while, and he asked if I might be able to switch to heals so we could get past Murmur, which was coming up.  Nervous, I went and re-specced and came back.  At the time, I didn’t know anything about grid or cooldowns, I just plunked the spells I found in my book into the toolbar and hoped for the best.

I’d had experience with Murmur and already knew to expect he would be difficult at best.  At the time, heroics took forever to clear and the mechanics could be harsh, even one-shot deadly.  Back in the day.  Get offa mah lawn!

Did I mention I was nervous?  Shaking.  What if I sucked?  I have an innate desire to be competitive and good at things.  I hate failing.  I take it hard if I don’t do something right.  In a raid, you’re responsible for 9 or 24 other people living through an encounter.  Their ability to tank or dps is directly dependent on you being able to heal them through all the things!  If you fail at that task, it gets noticed pretty quickly.  Talk about pressure!

There are times in life you are genuinely surprised at what happens when you’re forced in a situation you’re uncomfortable with and find that you do well.  We two-manned a heroic 5 man boss together.  He forced me out of my comfort zone.  I was forced to watch everything around me for a change, watch health meters.  Watch what the boss was doing.  Watch for patches on the floor.. now run to him, now run out.  Mechanics took on a new meaning to me.  Yanking his health bar from just a sliver all the way back up to full..  the thrill of getting a frookin’ pookin’ HEROIC boss down with only a tank and myself was just.. WOW.    I was hooked.

And that’s my story.  I’ve been healing ever since.

Why did I tell you that?  Because sometimes finding something you really like requires stepping outside your comfort zone.  Healing CAN and often IS a blast.  It’s challenging, from raids to 5 mans.  I’ve been in a 5 man where it was a snoozefest.. tank took little damage, I atonement dps’d most of the fight.  I’ve been in 5 mans where every pull was a hair-raising event – dps pulling off tank who’s got part tank gear, part heal gear.  I actually found that I improve my reflexes by being in those types of groups.  Keeps me on my guard and helps me to watch for warning signs for incoming damage.

Raids now require you to manage your mana effectively and balance your raid’s health.  Garalon is a good example of a taxing healing fight.  Constant aoe damage requires good cooldown management and communicating with your fellow healers to time your raid heals.  Will of the Emperor, the final encounter in Mogu’shan Vaults, is the opposite.  Constant tank damage while balancing raid heals and cooldowns for the Titan Gas.  You feel like a boss when you can juggle all that!

Sure, healing IS a responsibility.  But it can be a huge rush too!  A friend of mine suggested that healing is like DPSing.  Only instead of the boss, you’re dpsing your raid with heals!  Objective: Make the health bar go all the way to full.  He then went on to talk about how waffles should be the mandatory breakfast food of choice instead of cereal, but he actually brought up a good point and it’s worth looking at.  DPS drops boss’s health down.  Healers bring the raid’s up.  Boss’s health needs to drop fast – dps uses a cooldown.  Raid takes a huge hit of damage, healers use a cooldown.  Not gemmed or enchanted right?  Dps lose .. well, dps. Their output goes down the hole.   Healers lose hps and hpm, have lower output.

OMG HEALING IS LIKE DPS!  

AHH!  I need an adult beverage!

There’s definitely some differences and I’m just teasing of course, but anything you do requires perspective.  If you haven’t ever healed though – don’t be scared, give it a shot.  A good shot.  Get a couple of people you know together, find some healy gear, set it up right and que a couple of times.  You might be surprised.  There’s a lot of good websites out there with really good guides that will help you get started.  My personal recommendation?  I’ve used Plusheal.com for as long as I can remember, because they have forums for all healers with a smart group of people that excel at their class to chat with, and some happen to even write the guides you find there, so you can ask them questions.

I said it before, but I love a good story.  What brought you guys into the world of healing?  If you haven’t healed, what’s holding you back?    Explain it all, Clarissa!

However, I would like to take a moment to point you guys to where I was inspired to give my UI an overhaul.  That’s no easy feat either, I’m loathe to change my ui, I set it up the way I like it and grumble like mad any time I have to change or remove an addon.  I’m lazy that way, and I’m allowed.  At least I think I am… I’ll have to check.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL761D808689FB3840

There’s a whole series on different addons that he uses, which includes some of the things I’d like to talk about!  You think it’s time for a change?  Take a look at his playlist, he shows you how he built his from the ground up.  A big thank you to TouchyMcFeel for taking the time to post this video series, I hope he keeps at it, there’s a bunch more I’d like to see!

I love a good UI discussion, actually, I’m a sucker for em!   So tell me… what addons do you guys use that you just can’t game without?

Wait… how DO I get to Ironforge from here?

I digress.  I wanted to talk about some of the most important addons I’ve come across in my time as a healer in some form or another.  A lot of these are going to be general healing addons and not specific to any one class, although I know a few class-specific ones I would like to share.  This is going to be broken up into different posts, because I can and I’m fairly certain I’m evil.  I steal the last girl scout cookie and the last slice of pizza.

Anyways, we’ll start off hardcore.  The first thing I was REALLY concerned with when I started to raid as a healer was indeed, how to maximize my healing output.  You hear about people who aren’t even within 15-20% of the other healers in output for fights, spam healing rain and nothing else, don’t use prayer of mending, spam divine light, or worse, just run in and melee the boss (mad at not being picked as dps I’m guessing?).

There are several addons that are useful for adjusting your equipment based on what is BELIEVED to be best for your healing class.  I say believed because Healers really AREN’T thrown into a mold and bam, instant awesome.  Granted, MoP has been great and baselined the fact that EVERY healer is going to prize spirit as the top secondary stat, but what of crit, mastery and haste?  Disc priests, as an example, have two “styles” of play.  Smite, which uses Holy Fire and Smite to do damage to mobs to heal a player, can crit for extra damage and healing and in doing so provides a Divine Aegis shield on the lucky recipient.  Prayer of Healing, when crits, provides a fantastic bonus to the already automatic Divine Aegis shield that it places on the party. You can see why Crit is nice.  Another style of play still focuses on an increased usage of Power Word: Shield and Spirit Shell, which both play nicely off of mastery (though that looks like that won’t be the case for Spirit Shell come 5.2 as of last patch notes).

So why do I mention this?  Because everyone’s playstyle will be a little different and your mileage off of these addons will vary.  Research, practice and fine tuning are the only way you’ll get the most out of your healing.  These are to be used as tools that will help you squeeze the most out of whatever you pick.

Anyways, enough of that, let’s get to the good stuff.

You haven’t known pain until you’ve ran an LFR raid with 20 other priests….

The two reforge addons that I’ve used so far are ReforgeLite and Reforgenator.  Their jobs are to make reforging your character’s stats a little less daunting and even automatic.  This is great for a couple of reasons:  Say you get told by your raid leader that you’ll need to double duty as dps.  What to do with that extra gear you’ve been given?  Aside from the obvious answer of “Give it to me!”  Here’s your chance to have some fun and do something different, let’s do it with style!

Reforgenator: The Suggestive One.

Reforgenator is a pretty lightweight program.  You just type /reforgenator in-game when you enable the addon and you get this nifty little box.  It recognizes your class immediately and asks what type of spec you’re looking to reforge to.  The Consider Reforging Anything tab can be changed to just reforge what hasn’t been touched if you’re happy with everything else.  Reforge for Raiding can be changed to Reforge for Heroics (for people who haven’t gotten raiding gear yet) or PVP.

What it does is take in consideration what you have for gear and basically tells you what to reforge FROM and what to reforge TO on it.  The first item, my Trinket, it wants me to reforge FROM Spirit and turn it into Mastery.  There inlies a small problem – spirit is my #1 secondary stat, I shouldn’t be reforging from it right now.  But this addon is more suggesting I do it than automatically switching it for me. My personal recommendation?  You’d probably be better off using this for dps type characters.  This addon is sweet that it also considers any sort of Racial bonus to expertise, hit, etc that you might have.   Moving on.. Ironforge.  Where the #%@# *IS* Ironforge?!  ARG!

ReforgeLite: Automated Glee!

Alright, alright, I know what you’re thinking.  “OMGwhattheclusterfrigisallTHIS?!”  So, yes, ReforgeLite doesn’t appear all that light just from it’s initial appearance.  Compared to Reforgenator, it isn’t.  However, this gem does a bit more than Reforgenator will. So, the first difference you might notice is that this will pop up when you click on a reforging npc, as opposed to just calling this up.  Once this is up, you can then choose a preset selection by clicking on the PRESET button (such as Shadow Priest, Disc, Holy, and yes this works for all classes), this addon actually allows you to prioritize the secondary stats the way you want to.  Under Import Pawn, it lists Spirit, Crit, Mastery and Haste.  there’s also arrow buttons you can click next to each to set the priority how you would like it.  Once you have it set, click on CALCULATE.. below, it shows what it could potentially reforge for you.  In the above case, it found 306 points of mastery it could switch to crit for me.  The graph to the left shows the equipment it reforges to get that.  Hit SHOW and it shows the equipment again and the full cost of the reforge.  Hit Reforge and BAM.. it automatically reforges the equipment for you.  Awesome.  Bonus part?  It also takes into account any sort of Racial (like an orc’s axe expertise) as well!

There are also some offline options for reforging as well.   www.askmrrobot.com is a a great example, though my above warning holds for this site too.  Be mindful of ANYTHING that’s telling you what’s best.  Only research done through math (Adinne is a math dynamo!) and trial and error on your part will tell you exactly what you want to focus on.

Part 2 of Healing Addons!, we’re going to be talking about cooldown trackers!  Thanks for reading!

A very happy new years to you guys, and thanks very much for joining us in the new year!

Coming up this week, I’d like to talk more about useful healing add-ons and UI arrangement!  Stay tuned!  For those of you who just started reading, a toast to you and thank you for visiting!