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.

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.

That Guy!

Tags! New tag: that guy! So that guy was a rather main part of last post I did, though he wasn't very main. That guy is the guy who I hate and he hates me and he deleted my vent channel. My stated goal is to get him to talk to me about something bad I did. So I screwed with his vent channel last week, and he came into the channel me and 2 other officers were in and said something like "STOP @#$%ing with my vent channel." So close! But he didn't single me out. So this week I changed his [Officer] rank to [IDDYC] with the description "I Didn't Delete Your Channel." Well he hasn't said anything yet or prolly logged on.

On a related note the Guild Master and mutual friend apparently talked to that guy about me last week. Basically saying he should talk to me about stopping all this nonsense. He even tried to give that guy a link to this blog. So he may have read the last post, idk. As the response was told to me he said both "I hate him I don't need to talk to him" and "I've talked to him before." I certainly don't remember the latter one, but could be wrong.

I specifically love the story of this one icc raid where I had a headache at the start so was in my own vent channel. I took some yummy pills and it went away pretty quick. But then no one told me to get in vent, or dragged me, or asked me to move. So I was perfectly happy sitting around listening to music. So then we get to Suarfang, and normally I switch to dps, but I'm also not normally with the other two healers that night. So I stand there a waiting to heal or someone to tell me to switch. So the pull starts and I'm watching people look at me feeling all nervous. Target me, Target boss, repeat. And then like 3 sec before the boss pulls one of the other healers whispers me "go dps." So that was a wipe.

Apparently during all that I was being yelled at in vent by everyone. I just sat in my channel below them confused ~.~ So then I went dps. And was kinda laughing cause still no one except the one healer had whispered me or entered text into the chat window about me switching or anything. I believe they were yelling at me in vent still though. And then I think I raided mostly in my channel cause still no one told me to switch vent channels. I think someone dragged me eventually.

[makes me smile] :)

Oh and as for my hate for him. It's not really hate. Here's a fact about me that could make no sense. I hate guys. He's a guy. That's about it. I find it awkward, funny, and confusing that he seems to avoid talking to me. I know when we first met he'd go flirting with all the girls and I'd go trying to counter him. Partly cause I found that annoying, partly cause it was fun, and partly cause he's quite the trade troll. Prolly other reasons too. And I think that might be why he hates me so much or avoids me? But really I have no problem with him. Well, Cho'gall fears staying on me full duration is a lil problem. (1 raid with his healer last week) Also I'm rather incredibly mischievous if you try to talk to me which MUST be annoying. So that doesn't help.

poor blog has become hateful, this is all in good fun I assure you