Character Progression in Cata

I really miss wrath style heroics. No, not because they were easier. Because when I ran them on my main, I'd occasionally get to run them with other mains in guild. What happened to mains running heroics? There has been quite a bit that has changed since wrath, and I don't think any one reason is the cause behind this. But lets go through how any char seems to progress in my guild.

Week 1, your a new 85 with bought/crafted boe epics and blues. So you jump strait into heroics running them for a few days (since it's a weekly cap now). Now you are full heroic or above ilevel. Time to do troll heroics, so you pug some and burnout on doing those before 5pm. Maybe 4-7 more days of trolls, maybe you get a guild group randomly because we never plan any, eww they all wanted achievements, that took 2 hours longer than needed. Oh wait, you wanted achievements too, but still burned out before 5pm. Now you are mostly epics ready to go into raids by week 2, just in time for the alt run!

Lets insert me into that. I sign on at or after 5pm. Well that was easy, I'm pugging everything I might want to do. On the off chance I do get into one of these alt guild groups. Oh fun: " eww they all wanted achievements, that took 2 hours longer than needed." Time for bed! Oh well, pugging is okay I can still talk to my friends... "work" ... "I'm burned out, time for Rift" ... "I'm doing PVP" ... "I'm doing a serious raid, no talking, too serious" ... "..." (guess they were afk) ... "Lets play SC! Oh sorry, gotta use scissors to cut lawn, brb in 16 hours" ... or they aren't even online.

In wrath I could be online before 5pm, but still people tended to do things... after 5pm. Their mains would even run things! What happened to that... Raids are easier than heroics maybe? Do you want to spend 1-2 hours doing a heroic (1 boss) or 1-2 hours raiding (2-4 bosses and loot). Also what is the reward for extra points? If you are an enchanter crystals, that is it. Firelands will be adding primordial saronite equivalents, maybe that will help. There will still be the whole "hurry and burnout before Sakaki signs on," but maybe I could convince someone to actually take part in a planned time for heroics? Maybe it'll work for the first time, unlike the last 6 attempts by other people.

Maybe...

Cenarion Hatchling Pet

Though no one reads this blog :x Keredria over at Tree of Life is offering up some Cenarion Hatchlings in a giveaway. I gave her an extra one since I've already bought 5 of them, and may well buy some more later. They are so cute and 100% of the money I'm wasting on pixels actually goes to American Red Cross's Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami.

I've been a fan of Japan since probably when I bought a cute dinosaur while on a field trip and it had made in Taiwan on it. Of course Taiwan is not Japan, but my 7 year old self didn't know that. I've since become part of the anime culture and read the Japan history sections in my world history books that were skipped over in favor of more US history in every world history class growing up. I was quite a rebel.

Anyways, this is a great cause and I'm glad to see Blizzard throw something together like this. Also, while half joking with the friend who is supposed to buy me one (hurry up already I'm linking you this later) we thought maybe this will be the most sold pet from their store. We both know lots of people who like the pets available, but wouldn't waste $10 more on Blizzard considering the monthly fee, but who might buy more than one of these since it goes to charity.

Altena: Somewhere New

Upon returning to Professor Jones I asked him about the Kracken fossils and what he thought it might mean. He hastily replied it was of little importance and probably was from times before the Sundering. Then he went on to describe some great dwarf finds or something and people exploring outland, Orcs, and how I should be intersted. I stared past him ignoring whatever he went on about. He finally noticed me staring after a while and just taught me the next set of skills, showed me a new map, of outland no less, and made some half mumble of an excuse to be off. I departed through the window and was off to Kalimdor once more.

There was nothing much at all to say about this stretch of fossils and night elf artifacts. I found some glass animals. Some lovers notes and words to each other centuries old. Do they still exist Night Elves were immortal until not too long ago. Perhaps she died in some ancient battle though. How old are these anyways? Through all the purpose put on finding these artifacts there is nothing to date them. Such a use would be ideal in finding out if the Tentacles are indeed from before the sundering. Or did they come to rest here by some other means.

Another trip was called for to Jones. He seemed to remember me this time, gave me my map and sent me away. Back to Kalimdor back to fossils and Night Eleves. Back to Jones. For the same areas needing to train this often has become tedious. There was nothing new of interest. I found some bone fossil pet to follow me around. Some bones to turn me into a Naga illusion. Junk not worth interest for my true goal. I mentioned the items to Jones as he went through his spiel about Outlands again just to make him stop. Then he went on about how amazing these items were.

I'm quite sick of the man. Almost done though.

He insisted I go to outland, great wonders, artifacts, excitement, junk. Junk I'll never survey for. There is no point. Back to Kalimdor I went. More of the same. Though I heard that there was another place that had night elf artifacts in similar quantity. The northern lands I was so accustomed to and hadn't seen in ages. It would be nice to return there once again, perhaps discover new things and items long forgotten. Kalimdor though profitable in my ultimate goal has become very boring.

Back to Jones, to get the latest skill and finally go to a new location. He, of course, asked how Outland was, and I could have lied. I probably should have. He told me I must first use my skills for something more difficult until he would show me what I needed in order to venture to Northrend. I needed the maps, I couldn't even go back to Kalimdor now unless I did what he asked. I left, went outside, and had an idea. I just needed the maps.

I jumped on my Blue Drake and dropped onto the roof outside the library. I waited. I saw her run in from the throne room. She had maps. She had some ugly artifact I did not recognize. An expression of pride. I'd follow her. I used mind vision. She didn't even notice. Now I could find out what was on his precious maps and he would never know.

Luck would have it that she had come back from outland. The artifact was some ancient Orc item. They chatted about it, he mentioned dwarves, earthen, Brann, discoveries in the desert, and a new race. Some new project he was working on, an expedition he was joining. None of it mattered to me. Then they shifted to what she should expect next. Trolls, some Night Elf, and he went on about Vykrul for some time.

Then he cautioned her about Nerubians. Their artifacts were not for everyone. Hints of the gods they worshiped were in many of their works. Many did not enjoy the nature of their artifacts. Some studied them and were not heard of again. Mysteriously setting out on some solo expedition. I was interested in something he seemed to dislike and almost fear, as well as a race which was now nearly extinct.

Finally, he showed her the maps. Gave her a copy. I made my own rough copy making special note of the Night Elf and Nerubian locations.

Off to Northrend I flew.

Healing with others

This past week I got into some sort of alt raid. As I haven't been raiding they asked me to come. It went really well technically by bosses down. But by enviroment of vent it was pretty bad. Having main raiders paired up with alts and realtively new players was interesting. Healing at least was good.

I was healing with two other healers as usual. Although one was the alt of that guy who was basically leading the raid. I was rather low on the healing meter coming in third place and apparently he was a bit riled by that. (and the constant messed up kick didn't help) I had my excuse of having other things on my mind that night, but really why was I so low?

Our healing situation was him a pally, a shaman, and me the druid. He was good with his pally, I think he's leveled 8 or something. The shaman is normally the healer in my run, and she's pretty good except for her lack of gear due to luck. So of course going back to the meter I was low, I had high overheal a prime example of a bad healer.

With Druids we are all about HOTs, not as much as we used to be, but they are still our core mechanic. Hots of course have that nasty little over time part. I love the over time part, and if someone is not going to take more damage while the hot is sitting there there shouldn't be a reason to cast another spell until it is needed. In a perfect world HOTs would heal people the exact amount they needed before the next burst of damage came in.

However, in a world with a great pally and shaman healer I doubt those HOts are going to do much of anything. I have two options then: continue and appear to be horrible, or start trying to do direct heals. Switching to direct heals is just a horrible idea. You'd have to compete with two good healers who have better and faster direct heals. You would also be giving up your mastery in order to beat them to the heal.

Even if your hots were all going to overheal just having them up alows your speedy Nourish, mastery benifit, swiftmend, etc. This allows you to jump in when the other healers can't keep up and they need you. You should also have your innervate available for them. You will also continue using direct heals when they are needed, and keeping up one tank easily will benifit everyone.

This case was not as extreeme as I make it sound. It just brought up the thoughts. All healers should understand that there are more than one of you. Casting a spell that won't heal someone to full, but will combine with the 1-2 other healers to heal them to full will save everyone mana. The smaller the heal the more mana you save (except Regrowth!).

When healing with others you should try and understand how they are going to heal. They also need to understand how you are going to heal. We are all very different healers, but we come together to keep the raid alive. Add your mana to the other healers, use it as one unit to keep people up so they can kill the boss.

Stuff

I want to write about how I'm not raiding. And about how this new patch is like the beginning of cataclysm for me all over again. And about things completely unrelated to this blog and I would probably need to set the content warning flag for. And about my old website that has sat untouched for years now and ideas about reviving it into a blog where I can write all that. And I want to do that all at once.

I suppose I should condense down those ideas and probably skip over the content warning one as it's completely unrelated to the content of this blog.

So what's this about not raiding? Well past two three weeks our tank has mysteriously disappeared, however, I'm sure someone knows where he is and hasn't told me. Also, one of our main melee DPS has gotten into a rough patch and can't attend. This is great news for our warlock however. He's joined the main raid and has gotten 3 heroic tier along with other things since one of their DPS has mysteriously disappeared, same as our tank.

How's this patch similar to Cataclysm? Well the bug I mentioned of my respec cost suddenly dropping permanently only after I respeced I mentioned is similar to the bugs only I experienced post Cataclysm. I really miss that 33g. Also as I work, and log on after 5pm. I've yet to do any new instance, not that I need to I guess, but would be nice to do with friends. But everyone's done it all when I log on and is sick of it.

Content warning? Well, getting into blogging has kinda discovered a way to check all the blogs I used to look at infrequently and add many more. So now I'm reading about half wow blogs and half content warning blogs. You can fill in what content they might be warning me about on your own. And I'd love to make my own, or just talk about similar things maybe get into it in a way I haven't seen on a blog. Which relates to.

I have a website? Yes, I bought the domain when some creepy poet stopped using it years ago. It's got Wordpress on it and last post I made was way to long ago. I think I'll make a new theme and ideas and get it up and running and switch making all these post ideas completely unrelated to wow over there. And probably copy the wow posts here and there maybe integrate them somehow. The idea is still just starting and will take some time to finish.

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.