Big Things are Coming and Woot…Post 100!

Baby Pally has Grown

I have finally made level 100 on my Pally and I am super exited to try her out heals. I am only sitting at a 609 gear score, but I am working on getting more gear and getting silver proving grounds so that I can get my ring. Though I was at about 15 seconds before I could win silver and of COURSE the tank died. It is good practice for me healing though since I leveled as Ret. I went to ICY VEINS and found out some of the best talents and the stat priorities but I really need to sit down and find some resources to read about Holy Pally’s in general. I am looking for great information on rotation especially to ensure that I am being efficient. So, if you have any great references, please post them into the comments below or tweet me @sarindre .

Saturday Night Raid

We had a great raid on Saturday night getting down Hans and Franz for the first time and having a few tries on Flamebender Ka’graz (dang wolves!) and we should get her down soon. After we tried there we went back to Gruul and let’s take note that he did NOT drop the staff (Inferno-Flame Staff) nor did my bonus roll yield me the staff. Frankly, I sit around with 10 seals and use them every chance I get, but I rarely get anything from those rolls. Stupid staff…

New Stuff!

Now it is time for some new stuff! My husband, a friend of ours, and I have decided to start a podcast/website! It is called Geeks and Geeklets: An Adventure Guide to Gaming Parents (www.geeksandgeeklets.com) and is a site devoted to gaming, parenting, and all around geekery. Come join us as we balance our lives as gamers with parenting and as we watch our littles grow up surrounded by geek culture. The website will contain articles, tips & tricks, and eventually a podcast (in the works!). We are up and coming but would love for you to stop by and check things out!

Also, some of you might know that I run another general gaming blog over at thegeekymommy.wordpress.com. Here I talk about other games I am playing and the joys/struggles of being a gamer mom. Well I will no longer be posting there and will be focusing those posts to the Geeks and Geeklets site. So if you have read and enjoyed The Geeky Mommy, hop on over to Geeks and Geeklets for similar content.

Finally, I will be guest writing over at Gaming Mommies!  I will mostly be focusing on WoW related content but the site is full of great groups and great people! Check them out!

Geeks and Geeklets Contact Info:

Email – geeksandgeeklets@gmail.com

Site – www.geeksandgeeklets.com

Twitter – @ggeeklets

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/geeksandgeeklets

Tumblr – Geeks and Geeklets

Google+ –  Geeks and Geeklets

If you are interested in guest writing, please feel free to email us your post to geeksandgeeklets@gmail.com with the subject “Guest Post.”

Happy Healing!

I Guess I Need to Finish Levelling my Holy Paladin…

/start rant

Last Thursday I finally listened to Final Boss podcast on Resto Druids and it was kind of a bummer. I cannot lie, I still live in the moment when I was in the guild Fallen Heroes and Resto Druids were king. We were running all the Wraith content then and we always were running a Resto Druid, a Pally, and a Priest for sure.  But Resto Druids were always needed and wanted. In my current guild, we do not have many options and are running with three Resto Druids like I mentioned in my last post and a Holy and Disc Priest, so it not like we are going to be subbed as healers, but should we be? We are healing well and maybe we are not at the point that this matters but is our core healing team the problem? Are we the reason we have only downed 2 bosses in BRF and 4 in Highmaul? There is always the excuse that “oh the tanks are taking too much damage” or “we do not have enough DPS” but what if the real reason is “we do not have the right kind of healers.”   I think that it would be best to see if the raid leaders/guild leaders can take a look at the logs all together and see what we are lacking. It could be all three of the major issues or a combination of them.

The hindrance of having three Resto Druids was a bit noticeable when we ran BRF on Saturday. We ended up getting Gruul and Beastlord Darmac down on the first try which is really great. Then we moved onto Operator Thogar. We are doing pretty well on the fight but seem to lose it on the raid splits. I am the one chosen to follow the tank over to the one side and heal them. Normally I believe this roll of single tank healing would fall to a Pally, someone with great burst healing that will not let the tank die while he is being smashed in the face by a boss and tons of mobs. I am able to do it, basically I HoT the tank up and Regrowth/Heart of the Wild spam, but as I think about it, it would be way more effective for a non-HoT healer with great single heals to do this role.

I have two Holy Pally’s, one for the Horde side and one for the Alliance side that are almost level 100 and I am now seriously considering finishing leveling them and then trying one out in raid. I am for sure going to play the Pally on the Horde side; I am just not sure about what to do on the Alliance side. I love my Druid, I really do, but there comes a point in when progression is important and I want to do the best I can for the guild.  I have never been one to change a class. I have been playing a Resto Druid almost since the beginning and it is the only character I have seriously raided with. It would feel weird not to have her around. I do not like being at the crossroads like this and as I said before, maybe in Normal things like this are not important and you really only need to get up to Heroic and Mythic for it to matter, but I really am not sure.

In the end, I think I get jealous that I am not at the higher content yet. I know jealously is ugly but I really miss not being able to take a few nights a week and raid with a consistent group. I love the feeling of downing bosses and hitting the achievement of being in a high-end raiding guild. But that is not the situation we are in right now, and that is OK. I would just like to progress a little more. So for now, I will continue to raid with my Druid changing up my talents a bit with the advice from Jarre and Affinity and I will level my Pally and see what happens.

What do you think of Druids currently? Are we viable?

/end rant!

Happy Healing!

Adventures in Blackrock Foundry

I know it has been a few days (week or so) since my last post on either blog but boy things have been busy. Work is busy, home is busy, kids are busy and at the end of the day I just want to relax and play some video games, hence why no posts! We have been raiding on Saturday nights though and the past two weeks we have ventured into BRF. The guild ended up getting Gruul and Beastlord Darmac down!

I am really enjoying the difficulty of BRF, and I know that it has caused some tension in other guilds and trash is REALLY annoying at times, but it feels like a step in the right direction. The guild has seemed to pull together more and put forth a great effort at getting these bosses down. Not that we were not doing the same thing in Highmaul, but it feels that this time we are pushing harder than before. The new gear that we are getting helps a lot too. I would like to be able to say that I have been trying to get into other groups and run some Heroic Highmaul but that has not happened since I have been getting sucked into other games….dang you Alien: Isolation and Age of Wonders 3…

Gruul

I am so glad that Gruul is back. I loved this fight a long time ago, and this space makes it that much better. When we fought Gruul before, I felt that the space was bigger and it allowed for more movement of groups. This time, we are in a more compact zone and we had to pull together and make sure we were listening to the queues called by the raid leader. This might also be the first time I have ever seen a group put in Tranquility rotations, but this is also the first time I have ever ran with more than two Resto druids (we currently have three). But, the Tranq rotations really helped keep us focused and made sure we did not over-tranq one another. Two things I love about Gruul is cave-ins and his smash. These allow the raid leaders to see who is paying attention and not getting hit by the bad and really helps players tune into what they need to be paying attention to. Raid awareness is KEY in BRF and I think that this will be a continuing trend.

Beastlord Darmac

We did not get him down the first week, but we did get him down in week 2! This fight can sometimes be a mess, especially with all the fire in the end. I like that DBM does let you know what direction he is pointing in to breathe the fire. I just watch for the red circle so I do not get hit with that nasty fire. I hate fire, mostly because I run through as a Tree and we are flammable! The fight is complex in that it takes a bunch of different tactics and puts them into one area. This was a great test for our group and after a few tries we got it right. I like this complexity here! I even had to use Soothe which is a spell I have not used in a LONG time.  Again this focuses on raid awareness!

Three Resto Druids!

Our normal healing group (lately) has been three Resto Druids and two Priests.  This is a much different healing group that I am used to from the past. I always have ran with a Pally or a Shammy and I honestly think that this is making us become better healers since we are missing some of that direct healing. We have to heal in different ways to make sure large amounts of damage are not killing our tanks. I am not saying that Druids are not good at healing, but it is a different type of healing (HoTs) and I am thankful we are running with Priests at least to help us balance out. There are a lot of times where our HoTs are keeping the group alive but some of the heavy hits are tough. But every week were are getting better and better at complementing one another and ensuring that we are able to heal the fights. I cannot wait to get back in there!

Happy Healing!

Raid Analysis: Part 2

On Thursday I talked a bit about my own personal healing and the numbers I am pulling. I made some notes that I need to make sure I am casting Lifebloom more often and watch overhealing. Today, I would like to look at what gear I am wearing and see just how effective it is in comparison to what AskMrRobot inforgraphics are saying about how I should be preforming when compared with other Resto Druids with the same ilvl. First, here is a link to my current gear and spec. I know that I do not have the best gear, we have only completed a few bosses in Normal Highmaul. But I have been running LFR BRF and do have some gear from the random garrison missions in BRF. I am running with the 4 piece bonus, which I am enjoying, though I need to look at the benefits of the bonus a bit more.

As I mentioned last time, I am enchanting my weapon with Mark of Shadowmoon but I am unsure if I need to keep using it. It might be more beneficial if I were to change to the haste enchant. I am also about to make Stone of Fire; need only 4 more Savage Bloods! I think this trinket is actually pretty nice. Sure, it has versatility on it and that is not my favorite stat, but the amount of intellect it gives and the increase from mana pots is really nice! In checking the logs, the intelligence proc was up 30% of the time, which I think it pretty good when it comes to a procing trinket with a high internal cooldown. ( The Strength, Agility or Intellect proc chance is 35%. The stat proc lasts for 15 seconds and the internal cooldown is 55 seconds.) I want to check out the logs again once I upgrade the trinket to the Stone of Fire.

Now to take a look at some of the AskMrRobot infographics. I think this is a really neat tool that can help a player see how they compare to others at their ilvl. First, the picture below on the top is what healers on The Butcher should be doing at my iLvl. So the 95th percentile of resto druids are doing 41k, way higher than I am! Right now, I am hitting just in the green at 74th percentile, which is good, but I am happy to see there is room for improvement. The picture on the bottom is the over all for the Twin Ogron. I ended up doing 22k on the Twins which is pretty good when comparing it to the normal for my ilvl but when I first saw that number I was shocked since it was so much lower than what I can pull on other bosses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first infographic is talking about how this fight went overall and how I compare. I am going to use two very different fights and show how I did in both. The picture on the top is The Butcher and the picture on the bottom is Twin Ogron. This section shows how well I performed in the fight. For The Butcher It takes into account potion use, avoidable damage, cleave, and HPS. For the Twins it looks at potion use, interrupting shout, HPS, avoidable damage, and enfeebling roar. For The Butcher, it is pretty easy to make sure you use a potion, and since I am ranged, to avoid cleave and the other avoidable damage. Most ranged can get those numbers. For HPS, I scored a 7.4 out of 10. This number reports back to the picture above and shows where I am on the scale. As for the Twins, I did a little less hot. Of course I remembered to use a potion (or I would be OOM fast) and I avoided the interrupting shout. HPS is down from The Butcher which might be accounted in the fact that I am running from fire about 50% of the time. Or I am avoiding fire way less than 50% of the time with only a score of 4.7…..ouch… I also got a score of 0 for running in for enfeebling roar. I maybe ran in one time, no good. As you can see the complexity of the boss is much different for me as a healer in Twins than it is for The Butcher. Raid awareness is much harder for the Twins, and something I need to work on, but that fire…it is horrible!

 

The next section on the infographic just shows how much HPS was done for the fight. As stated above, I did 33k on The Butcher and on the Twins I did 22K.

The third section of the infographic asks “Is that good healing?” On the top is the number for The Butcher and on the bottom is Twins. This shows how the healing looks in comparison to people in Normal Highmaul.  My numbers are looking good, but there is room for improvement. I think that if I increased my raid awareness (like avoiding the fire in Twins) I will be able to increase these a bit.

 

To me, this is the most important graphic. I want to know how I am doing in comparison to other Resto druids at my ilvl. Resto Druids are great healers and with our HoTs we are able to saturate the raid in heals. For the Butcher, 74th percentile is pretty good. There is not a lot of movement for me that fight. I just need to ensure I keep Lifebloom up and use Nature’s Vigil more often. I also think I need to watch when I am doing Tranquility as I wasted it on this fight and it was mostly used as an overheal. As for the Twins, 68th percentile means I could show a lot more improvement. When looking at the logs (below) I again did not cast Lifebloom enough and it seems that there were not enough people in the range of Tranquility. Per usual, my overhealing is high on Rejuv and Germination, but it is not too bad on other spells. This lower percentage could be due to the fact that I am moving around a lot more and there is a wide variety of damage due to the moving fire.

 

 

Looking at the logs from both of these fights makes me wonder two things:

1. Should I even be using the Glyph of Rejuvenation and Glyph of Healing Touch? The Glyph of Rejuvenation provides the following benefit:  when you have Rejuvenation active on three or more targets, the cast time of your Healing Touch spell is reduced by 10%. The Glyph of Healing Touch says when you cast Healing Touch, the cooldown on your Nature’s Swiftness is reduced by 2 sec. But when look at the numbers, I only casted Healing Touch 5 times in The Butcher and 5 times in Twins. Both of these glyphs seem like a waste if I am not using Healing Touch often. Though I am not sure what glyph I would switch to. Should I try to use Healing Touch more often (though it does make me nervous since it does have a high mana cost) or should I use different glyphs? What glyphs do you use?

2. When does everyone use Incarnation: Tree of Life or do you even have it? it took me a while to even get on using it every fight and it seems that if you time it right you could be using it twice a fight at times. I have been trying to remember to use it every fight but there are times when I just do not use it nor think that it is needed in the fight. I do use it in Brackenspore all the time when the Rejuv Mushroom is out and I can just sit there and spam the raid with Regrowth! But I am really unsure if Force of Nature or Soul of the Forest is better than Tree of Life. What are your thoughts on the talents?

As per last time, any advice would be great!

Happy Healing!

Raid Analysis: Part 1

On Monday I said I wanted to talk a bit about gear and rotation and since I have not done much in WoW this week (ie – this post here) I figured it was a good place to start. Over the weekend I worked out some gear and rotation issues I have been having and I felt like I was in a good place. Though, I am not perfect and would like to look at my logs as one big happy family and see where I am having issues. I am mostly going to look at The Butcher for this information and I am using AskMrRobot as my combat log analyser. They have great graphics, and show the information in a nice concise way.  ***I would like to also note that I am only discussing my own healing and no one else’s in this post.***

The first image below is the overall healing for The Butcher. Like I said in the first post, I am very ecstatic about that 33K HPS, even though at my current gear score I think I can be pulling more. I have noticed my numbers are on a general uptrend (ie: Brackenspore was also at 33K). The next number that I am not too proud of is the overhealing number. As a healer from BC, overhealing has always been a big issue. You want to heal and make sure no one is dying but if you heal too much then it is a waste. There is such a fine line for me when it comes to healing and making sure the group is surviving. We will get more into this number a bit later. The last number of note here is my active time. Why is it not 100% you ask? Well because I use the Draenic Channeled Mana potion in fights and this gives me a 10 second downtime for every fight. (I love this potion in fights and find that if used correctly I can get a ton more mana especially when using the Stone of the Waters. I almost can make the Stone of Fire!). Then there is moving and the general “well no one is taking damage so I am not wasting mana,” standing around.

The next image is one that is more descriptive per spell. As you can see most of my overhealing comes from Rejuvenation, though I am not too shocked by this number. In many instances, especially in this fight, i try to roll HoTs (Rejuv and Germin) on a lot of the raid. With The Butcher, the melee DPS (or the DPS in melee position) take a lot of continuous damage.  The same can be said for the overhealing with Germination. Wild Mushroom, Wild Growth and Tranq are bound to have some overhealing, though Wild Growth might be a bit high and in this fight it seems that I did Tranquility at the wrong moment. 73% overheal….oi! I am happy to see some ok percentages for Multistrike since I do not focus on that stats.

One major issue I have is my Lifebloom. 22.3% uptime is not very good. I do not expect 100% since i like the bloom going off, but at least 75% . I need to make sure that I am rolling this on the tank that has main aggro on the boss.

I also need to make sure that I am using Nature’s Swiftness! I am using it more than i ever had before but I would like a higher uptime with it. It is such a useful spell but I hate to waste it at the very beginning of the fight where there might not be that much damage occurring.

Below is the graphic that shows the total healing done and lets me see how my mana is during the fight. I made it a little over halfway through before I used a Draenic Channeled Mana potion which let me finish the fight off until the end with pretty good mana. The big spike in healing is when I casted Tranquility. I know that casting Wild Growth is very mana heavy so I need to make sure that I am only using it where there is a group of players that are taking/will be taking a lot of damage. That will help me use less mana. Right now, I am enchanting my weapon with the mana enchant. I think I would like to take that off and try the haste enchant in order to see how it will affect my healing.

As I said before, I know I am not perfect and need some work. I need to focus on fixing my overhealing a bit, keeping Lifebloom up, and ensuring that I keep high raid awareness. I want to look more into what I am doing in order to hit the higher numbers and be a more effective healer for my team.

Any advice for me?

Check out Part 2 on Friday or Saturday to see some more analysis using some of AskMrRobots infographics!

Happy Healing!

Weekend in Raiding

This weekend in WoW went from looking very eventful (first normal BRF guild run) to not so eventful (returning to normal Highmaul) and finally to very successful (beating Brackenspore as a guild for the first time!). Thought I was very excited to run BRF for the first time, we had a tank that was a bit under the weather and were going to have to use some alts. My husband was recruited to switch from his Warlock to his (undergeared) DK tank and we had some other alts join as well.

It went pretty well. I will admit that it is much harder to heal the alt tanks than it was to heal our normal tanks. However, we did end up getting Kargath and The Butcher easily. I got an off-hand from Kargath too (Bileslinger’s Censer, something I had no idea dropped, not sure how I missed it in the loot table before…).  Plus I was able to hit 33k HPS on The Butcher. I am not sure how it happened since I usually am stuck between 27k and 30k on a boss, but it did. I did make some gear changes and tweeked my rotation a bit and I could notice that I had much better performance than I have had thus far. That four piece bonus on the tier gear is really nice too! On average I found that the Mushroom ability (which is what recount is calling it) is doing about 200k per boss. And it proc’s on Ysera’s Gift which in my book is equally amazing. I did not have time this weekend but I would like to analyse my logs and see how things looked.

After The Butcher, we went over to the twins since that has been an easy win for us most of the time. Not this time however, but after a couple wipes with alts, many people switched back to their mains (tanks included) and we were able to get them down fairly quickly. We then decided to do something that we have been skipping for the past few weeks, and that was Brackenspore. For some reason, Brackenspore was just not clicking for us. But we had some time and we thought we would give it a go. We kept it to mains since this is a gear check fight and lo and behold we got him down on the first try. And that Hunter bow dropped that a hunter in the group wanted/needed! All in all, it was a good night of raiding.

Once I can pull together my logs and also get my screen shot uploaded of the wondrous 33K HPS (because screen shot or it didn’t happen right?)  I wanted to talk a bit about rotation and the gear (ilvl 661) I am currently running.

What is your rotation when healing and current ilvl?

Happy Healing!

RaF Dungeon Adventures!

Last night the hubby and I did some dungeons on our Horde Pally and Druid combo. As some of you know we are doing recruit-a-friend and have the heirloom gear on so it is going ridiculously fast. This is mostly due to the fact that we are just running dungeons and instant pops since we are a healer and a tank. We made it to 70 last night (so close yet so far) and we might have them ready to raid with the horde guide next Friday! However, as we are dinging away, I noticed something. There are three kinds of people in dungeons.

1. The Normals – The people who are just there to level and will mostly stay quiet except for an occasional “Hi,” “Grats,” or “thanks”
2. The Impatients – The people who PULL ALL THE THINGS. This category goes to the DPS who just run ahead and pull without a tank being ready and it also includes the tanks that pull the entire dungeons and expect miracles
3. The AFKers/Jerks/BOTS – People who will AFK without word and might be gone for 13 minutes in that time you have already killed two bosses and have not been able to kick for a replacement since you cannot kick until 15 minutes into the dungeon OR Jerks OR BOTS (which to be honest I didn’t know it was possible to bot in a dungeon) which I will talk about below!

Normals, I love you. Thank you for coming to dungeons and making leveling easy and even enjoyable. Impatients, I tolerate you. As a healer, you make my job harder but it is nothing that I cannot handle. The biggest issue that I have had with you was when you were mixed with a jerk in a dungeon I was in a while back and you created a player that hated me as a healer because of the server I am on. Let me repeat that so that it takes FULL effect. Someone became an impatient jerk when they noticed I was on the server Misha and stated in chat “I do not like players from Misha, you all suck, deal with this” as he ran and pulled EVERYONE in the beginning of the dungeon and we all died. Yep, that is what you get when you are a so-so tank and you pull about 15 mobs and dash away from me on purpose.

AFKers why do you even join dungeons and interact with people if you really do not want to be there? Now I am not talking about legitimately having to take the dog out or deal with the children, we have all been there! But be polite, let the group know. Most of the time these leveling dungeons are so fast, 20 minutes on average to complete, don’t be gone for over half of it and sit there soaking up XP and quest completions while we do all the work.  In the newer WoD dungeons, there are many times when you actually need all the players to be present and playing…Grimrail Depot…I hate you…

Jerks we all have seen them, and sometimes we are one when you are frustrated to the point of no return. But there are some people that you will run into that are just plain rude and make the game unenjoyable for those minutes you have to spend with them. There is no point to troll or mock or be mean to people in a game that is meant for collaboration. We all have the same goal. Let’s just get together and play nice.

Hello mister tank bot? How did you get into my dungeon? Why are you wearing weird DPS gear? Where are your shoulders! Why are you taking so much damage!!! Hello? Tank? Are you there? Hmmm you are not answering anyone. Great you are now only taunting once and pretty much everyone has aggro. And now you are dead and you won’t accept a rez.  AND we cannot kick you for another 5 minutes. But we can report you as a bot…which we did. Then we kicked you and a new, non-bot, tank came in and rocked it! PS – thank you new tank for 1. Not being a bot and 2. Confirming that you were in fact not a bot when we asked.

Overall, the dungeon experience we have been having with the RaF fun has been good. Most people just want to get in, kill bosses, and get experience points. Though there are times when I am so nervous since I am healing as a Paladin for the first time and I expect to be called a “noob” even though there have been no deaths (yet), it has been close at times.

How about you? What sort of players do you run into in dungeons?

Happy Healing!

My Raid UI, Showing Addons 2.0

As promised, here is what my UI with addons looks like while I raid.

Here you can see that I have Grid arranged horizontally and by group. This helps me fit the addon in the little corner of my screen. I use Grid to heal which means I spend a lot of time looking at that corner. I like to make sure it is not cluttered and that everything is crisp. You can also see Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text. Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text is a completely cosmetic mod for me. Not really a necessity but something I like. It shows me how much I am healing (on the right side) and how much damage I am taking or what I am being healed for (on the left side). The top tells me abilities I have gained (ie auras, buffs) and mana gained during combat. The bottom reports when my abilities are off cooldown. One addon that you cannot see here is Quartz. Quartz is a customizable casting bar. It will report any lag that you are having and shows you casting time clearly. I do not usually see it very often since most of my spells are instant.

In this next picture you will see a bit more of Pitbull, Deadly Boss Mods, and Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text. Pitbull here is when I have a target and it also shows the target’s target. Now I rarely have anyone targeted since I use mouseover macros to heal, but I wanted to show what my targeting looked like. I also placed it on the left side right above grid because during most of the time I am healing, I am just focused on grid and putting my target there is pretty logical for me. Deadly Boss Mods is a must for any raider. This mod tells you bosses abilities on timers. You can choose where the bars are and how you want information to be displayed.

 

Happy Healing!

Useful Healing Addons 2.0

Throughout my healing career, I have used many methods to help me heal more effectively. When I began the game I used the dreaded WoW UI and just clicked on a target and then casted the heal by pressing the number key I had it associated with.

When I became a little more WoW savvy, I would then use my F keys to choose the target and then hit the number button for the heal. This made my healing way faster than before, but was only useful for 5 mans. I never played with my mouse, only using it to loot. This method worked for a long while with me, what was until I wanted to raid.

Obviously you do not have 40 F keys available to use and I did not even like using all 10 F keys for 10 Mans. I had to find a new method. I did my research and found out all about WoW addons. I was enchanted! I loved the idea of changing my screen to fit my needs.

I started by using the WoW raid frames to change my healing. I would pull them out onto my screen, click on the names and then heal. This worked, depending on fight I would have some lag with clicking but I was getting really fast at this.

Then about 5 years ago I found Grid, and even since then we have been having a sultry love affair. I love this raid UI, which I also use during 5 mans as well. This let me keep my raid frames small and still be able to click on them and then hit my heal number. I would still use my F keys to heal the party I was in (usually the tank group because of old Tree of Life Buff). I was just as fast as when I used WoW frames, but my screen was much less cluttered. Plus Grid would show my who had aggro, health, mana, and any debuffs the party had. It was like everything all in one!

Today I use Grid with mouseover Macros to make my healing even more effective but that is a different discussion.

SmartBuff is another big helper. Most healing classes have a few buffs to give out and how annoying is it for people to ask for buffs all the time? Very! With this addon, all it takes is a middle mouse wheel roll and you will buff everyone who needs it! Takes the guesswork out of buffing.

These are just a few addons that I feel help me heal. But of course I run with many more! Click on the picture below to see it in all its glory!

Pitbull – I love this addon. It makes your player interface very customizable. I can change my health and mana bars, my character portrait, and target information. You can also do party windows ad raid windows here too.

Bartender4 – This addon makes your bars look neat and clean! Completely customizable. Don’t like squared buttons? Have circle ones! Want to hide some bars so that they only appear when you put your mouse over it? You can do it too! I actually love this feature, it makes my bars less cluttered.

Sexy Map – This lets you move your mini map and make it look however you want it. Pretty neat!

Recount – Tells you what you healed during a fight and raid. Also reports DPS, Damage taken, total damage done and many other things! Will compile reports till reset.

Buffalo3 – Move your buffs and debuffs to maximize room.

I also run WIM which is a WoW instant message screen. It helps me keep track of everyone I am talking to on there own condensed screen and Prat which colors your chat frames by Guild, Party, Raid, ect. Also colors names of players by class. A fun addon! .

I plan to post some screens from raid so you can see how my UI works with action going on!

Happy Healing!

WoW = RL

***This was originally posted 7/15/2010***This week the shared topic on Blog Azeroth comes from Six Inch Heals and asks us what WoW has taught us about real life or if WoW has impacted our real life in some way. This is a GREAT topic I think. And yes I am a few days late with starting it but for me this one flows freely.

How Shadow Labs Changed my Life

I think I will address the second part of this question first, has Wow impacted my real life in some way. When I read this I was a bit apprehensive to answer at first, most will find what I am about to tell you a little odd, but over the years I have grown to love and embrace the circumstances I faced.

Let’s take a step in my time machine and go back early 2007. I was 20 years old and had been playing WoW for a while. I played a warlock most of the time (while lvling my druid on the side) and would run dungeons constantly. One of my favorite of these dungeons was called Shadow Labs and I would run it constantly.

One of these runs contained two of my RL friends at the time and 2 random PUG hunters we found. One of the hunters (HuntardA) was horrible, calling out their crits in chat on little bugs that roamed the instance and in general low numbers and a poor attitude. The other hunter (Drewtwo) instantly whispered me saying just how bad this hunter was. I laughed and kept general chatter going back and forth about WoW and the other party members. By the end of the dungeon I thought it was great to meet someone so nice in this game and added him to my friends list.

Now, I am a very outgoing person, on the web and off, and I am not afraid to start chit chat with someone I have talked to in the past. I logged on after class the next day and saw he was on. I sent a quick little tell saying hi. I was not sure if he would respond because I thought he would not remember me. Sure enough he did remember me and we began chatting again. Asking general question about age (he was 4 years older than me), where we lived (he is Cali and me in PA),work, school, and interests. This went on for weeks just chatting back and forth and running dungeons for gear.

The guild I was in had a vent server and we would hop in that when doing dungeons. Now Drewtwo remained in another guild and I would occasionally run a raid or two with them for fun. One day he left his guild and asked if he could join ours. I was excited to have a nice and talented hunter join. Soon we were not only chatting on vent everyday but on the phone as well. Our bond was growing stronger and stronger and we were to the point where we could tell each other anything. We never even met and he was my best friend.

For my 21st birthday, I decided that my friend Bear and I would fly from PA to CA to meet Drewtwo and celebrate my birthday somewhere fun! Once we were there and I met Drewtwo for the first time, it was like cupid ran me over with a semi-truck. I was lovestruck. After a week of hanging out and getting to know each other in person, we decided to start dating. The feelings we had for each other were strong. We decided that I would move to Cali with him (Ok ok I know red flag right? But I was young and in love with my whole life ahead of me. PA was depressing and I wanted to get out and live my life. You only live once right?) .

18 days later, Drewtwo flew out and picked me up from my house and we drove across the country. December 22, 2008 he proposed at our weekly D&D game (yes HUGE dorks!) and March 7th 2009 we were married and we currently have a baby on the way. ***(We now have two babies! A 4 year old girl and a 1 year old boy)***

While this story may be strange to some, this is the most wonderful thing to happen to both our lives. If we would have never played WoW, we would have never met. this game has shaped both our lives deeply.

A Short List of What WoW has Taught Me

1. Live in the moment. Sure things may seem bleak as you wipe on LK for the 100th time, but you never know what will happen when you do just one more attempt.

2. Your closest friends are ones who share your interests. I love my guildies as my good friends. We can talk about more than just WoW but it is WoW that binds us together.

3. People take games VERY personally. This can be good and bad. Yes you want to enjoy the game, but you can take it too far. Competitiveness is good, but in moderation.

4. In game affects real life. I find this is especially true for role-playing. You need to separate out the game and life. Your friend betray you in a roleplay? Well that was just the character, not them. Do not let it ruin a friendship!

5. You can build confidence and learn to lead by becoming a Raid Leader. This may seem silly but I feel I have become more confident and effective by raid leading and being an officer in the guild. People come to you with issues and problems and it is up to you to sort them out. Plus being a female and getting on over vent to lead a bunch of guys may seem scary at first, but once you can you are ready to take over board meetings at work and speak your mind.

6. Finally remember, love and friendship could be only a LFG away. 🙂

***Reblogged from 07/15/2010***