Patch 4.0.6!

Or at least that's what my blizzard patch notes said as it installed. Has anyone else had that same problem? I love reading patch notes. I've even gone back and reread patch 1.14 patch notes and such for various reasons. But nearly every patch since the new launcher/patcher I keep getting the previous patch's patch notes. I could go browse around the forums, but I always have problems with that. I can't find it cause it's been so long, or I get distracted with the new layout, or the bug forum and think about posting my bugs again.

I expected to find them on the main page, which turns out they are there, but not in the highlighted news section at the top. I should stop looking at the top of the site and just scroll down it seems, but it's so big and demands attention. So now I guess I'll read the changes and post at the same time.

• Prowl has a new icon

That was probably the largest change I noticed right away, besides addon errors and respecing for 66g which dropped to 33g permanently after I switched specs for the first time since the patch.

• Feral Swiftness now also causes Dash and Stampeding Roar to have a 50/100% chance to instantly remove all movement impairing effects from the affected targets when used.

Well that goes and explains why I've not been hearing any "complaining" about how much ferals suck in pvp lately from the guild.

• The troll druid models for Flight Form and Swift Flight Form have been slimmed down to be more in scale with other druid flight forms, and have had their animations improved.

Aww, I just saw that last weekend or something. It was so neat looking.

Wow what a huge patch, did anyone else notice the massive changes to old dungeons? They removed chunks of wailing caverns! Also wtf they added the leatrix latenancy fix into the game options O.O which would remove the affects of the global registry settings from other programs. And to think my guild master just posted that to our main page.

Where's the 4.1 resto druid analysis and changes you may be wondering. Well almost every druid blog I read has a 4.1 post I agree with and I'm certainly not going to add anything new to their well thought posts. Especially since I'm not even raiding until our tank mysteriously reappears.

Making 'I' a link just felt wrong

Am I Trying?

Last night I was told that while people used to be impressed by my healing numbers they thought I wasn't trying anymore. I took some offence to this since when I needed to I definitely do try. It just feels so limiting with the spells we are given. On trash I've definitely given up though. If we are CCing the pull there's nearly no damage anyways. If I feel up to it I put Lifebloom on the tank. Raid damage tends to be single target and other people have much more efficient and faster heals so I let them do their thing. If I did try to heal them all I can cast fast enough is regrowth which generally wouldn't top them off, so they'd need another heal anyways.

If the trash isn't CCd then there might be some AOE. AOE: Cast Wild Growth followed by Rejuvenations and recently Nourish as needed since it's fast now. That's what I do, there's nothing else to be added to that except Swiftmend. There's no variation. And that's AOE. Seems like I'm missing something.

And bosses are just a combination of the two, Lifebloom and AOE. Sure there's cases where I cast Healing Touch, even rare cases I might cast a Regrowth or an Insect Swarm. So am I not trying? I don't know, but to me it doesn't feel like there's anything I can do except cast the spells that need to be cast when they need casting. If I'm doing near equal healing as our priest I think that might be good.

Also this brings up the old topic of BIG numbers equate to good. Healing is not similar to DPS in the numbers it puts out. This is more true than ever now. From people who have said this to me repeatedly and then told me I must not be trying because my numbers are low, it's rather shocking. They should know I try to be efficient not just cast Wild Growth when it's off cooldown and hot the raid constantly. That Guy boasted about beating me on his shaman the one night he was with us. Congrats to him, but he sure didn't cleanse me as I was feared across the room and we wiped.

All this leads to something I've said to myself often. Healing has become boring. Not to say I don't like it. I still like healing in a raid. If I didn't I would have quit ages ago and bought some toys with the $15 I'd save every month. It's just so much of the same. Partly the reason behind this is we've been stuck doing the same bosses for about a month due to third healer issues. If we had a good healer we would prolly clear everything except Nef in the first two nights. We nearly did that once a while ago. Then we could start heroics and such

I somewhat wonder if I could try more. I have gotten to being able to use my innervate on others nearly all the time. So I could then use more of my mana. If the goal was to end the fight with zero mana I could cast regrowth more often. As I currently consider the amount healed for the mana the worst of any spell in game. Therefore, I tend to try and cast it never. That would definitely burn my mana, but as we are doing the fights without this, would it really be worth it at all...

In other news. I finally finished buying justice point things, yay a relic.

To the Left; To the Left

There's a trend I noticed in our guild runs. I've noticed this for a while, but with the 3+ new healers we've had recently I find it more interesting. Generally raids are very linear, but occasionally there are paths that split and arrive at the same location. Currently the two locations we mainly come across them is the portals in Bastion of Twilight and the platforms in Throne of the Four Winds (we meet on Nezir). So when the choice comes up everyone takes the left path except me. I generally take a right path, and even though everyone else is going left I don't see a reason to as well.

This raises the question, what direction does your raid go?

Also this shows some sort of larger symbolism on the connection between myself and the rest of my raid. I go right, everyone else goes left. I've been less and less in vent during the raids the past week. We did only two bosses yesterday and I wasn't in vent at all. I wasn't even summoned to the OS run they did after, not that I really wanted to go. Things have been trending this way for a while. I still raid great and I love doing it. I just feel ignored, which I hate.

Another interesting thing I thought up while wiping to Elemental Monstrosity due to tank lagging. The idea is to bet on death locations. Place your shrooms where you think you'll die, take bets. I don't have anyone to bet with, but I probably would if I did. You don't die on one, they win. You do, you win. Pretty simple, of course you ultimately stand where you want, so if you really want to win the bet this is probably a really bad idea. Ultimately actually killing the boss is the goal, so I don't know who wins then. Maybe voting which one you are closest to would be better.

That Guy Conclusion

So like two days ago I changed his vent password cause he started retaliating against me by changing my rank. Well I told him to tell me off via rank descriptions. Which he did indirectly via rank descriptions. /facepalm

Soo this morning he texted me like swearing at me and asking for his password, and I totally forgot I changed his password at first. But I was happy he finally directly said something to me, it's been months. So I thanked him and as I hadn't heard back from him I must have guessed what I changed the password to since I did forget. But it's finally over. What a day to end this though. April Fools!

I really don't like this internet day much. I'd post some joke, but there is quite enough of that going around. Is it bad I only liked the furry critters to follow around and give buffs covered by other classes? The rest all seemed overdone, and would regrowth even be worth casting then?

In other news. On our 7th healer to fill our third healer slot we got someone new. Who might not be around I don't really know. But it's nice to have a new healer who is somewhat good and doesn't seem to hate me. If she sticks around it'll be great. If that guy comes back to heal with us I don't even know.