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.

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.

Pokemon!

So I've like not played wow in 2-8 weeks except raiding. Oh, and I logged on to check if I had a battered hilt still for someone, but I don't know who it was so I never told them I have one. And! I logged on to make pants for someone cause I halfway made them weeks ago, and by god that didn't take long cause have you seen the cast bar on tailoring epics? No, of course not it's that fast. And a few minutes of fishing for Vortex. Otherwise I've been busy driving, shopping, driving, visiting friends, or playing Pokemon. Not that I've been playing Pokemon non-stop.

So there's been like nothing to post about wow. We killed Cho'gall at some point and haven't done much more than that. OH! I finally got power torrent after like 2 months of everyone else getting it cause everyone forgot about me and kept asking me to enchant their stupid chest or boots and what not. Though I got it by not turning in 9 shards to the gbank so no one knew they existed so I could buy the pattern and enchant my weapon myself. And omg our guild's other raid has like 3 heroic modes down or something but no one tells me the number or when we kill something so our website says zero not that I'm the, whatsit, webmaster or anything.

Oh and some guy thought I deleted his vent channel which was remade near instantly and the first time in 2 months I stayed overnight in vent he deleted mine so I come back the next day sitting in the lobby. I may have taken away his broadcast away for a few minutes and will probably do more to him tonight since I'm feeling pissed again. Oh! I'll make his channel a weird broadcast mode *evil laugh* (my hatred stems from the fact that he refuses to confront me about anything I do, maybe this time!)

There sure are lots of reasons to not log onto wow for me. No one to play with sucks too. I've got one main friend left who always does their heroic for the day and never wants to do another. Anyone else in guild I go with seem to always want to do achievements which I always tend to die during. ("but it's the way you are supposed to do the boss" 'or we could skip the boss' ... *dies*) and that's assuming they haven't already finished their one daily before 5:30pm or later! I could go do archaeology and go insane, or do dailies and hate myself as I'm camped at a graveyard that resses me every 30 seconds.

So I could do all of that or I could text my friends who can't play and play Pokemon and watch Adventure Time!

I'm good at depressing randomness

Three 10s make 25

Since the expansion came out my guild has been focusing on 10 man raiding. I've always enjoyed this more. 25 just seemed an odd number to me. I was used to the 40 or 15s of vanilla even though those make even less sense looking back at them. I'd still like there to be a 40 man raid come around again, just something for fun and not 3 days long. The guild has been running two 10 mans for a while now, with some minor attendance issues, including the blizzard knocking out my 10's tank last week and us barely raiding.

But tonight, we are joining up with another guild on our server to combine our two guilds three 10 man raids into one 25. I can't say I'm thrilled, but all the reasons make sense. Also, I'll always like helping people and will pretty much always come along. With the new patch coming out today, along with the new dual guild 25 being attempted I can hardly imagine it will go smoothly. My last dual guild raid was in vanilla, and there was a little issue involving a belt, an enchanting pattern, and me. While it is the only claim to fame I have, I hate telling it, and for some reason continue to do so.

Luckily the only loots I'm obsessed over drop outside of raids and I think I've matured a bit since then, and well defined loot rules should hopefully make tension from drops not as much of an issue as they used to be. So I'm hopeful the raid goes well and the only issues we have stem from addons and instance servers. Not the players or guilds.