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***

Rez all the things! Or not.

Back in 2010 when there was a massive change in Rebirth I wrote this blog post. Now there are some new mechanics for all of the ways to rez in combat as you can see below and originally here:

• During a boss encounter, all combat resurrection spells now share a single raid-wide pool of charges that’s visible on the action bar button.
• Upon engaging a boss, all combat resurrection spells will have their cooldowns reset and begin with 1 charge. Charges will accumulate at a rate of 1 per (90/RaidSize) minutes.
• Example 1: A 10-player raid will accumulate 1 charge every 9 minutes (90/10 = 9).
• Example 2: A 20-player raid will accumulate 1 charge every 4.5 minutes (90/20 = 4.5).
• A charge will only be deducted when a combat resurrection is successful (when the target accepts the resurrection).
• Raid frames now show a debuff indicating that a dead player has a pending combat resurrection available.
• Outside of raid boss encounters, combat resurrection spells retain their normal cooldown behavior.

I believe this works very well with the current raid style though I have seen some disagree, mostly when they are lying on the ground dead from fire. There are some still who I think do not understand that there are a limited number of rezzes available, at least when I am in LFR. With this new rule, this will make many who have the ability to rez rethink who they are going to rez. Will you rez the 10k DPS who died because they stood in fire, the healer whose HPS is below a tanks, or the tank that is taking way too much damage for the fight? Or will you wait to see if someone who is a better choice dies before you rez? These are now questions that we will now have to ask ourselves in combat. Plus we will have to ignore all the “REZ PLS” and “SOMEONE BR ME” that we see yelled in chat during LFR. It seems for Normal and above raids, this job of picking will now fall onto the Raid Leader. They will be the ones who will need to make the tough choices on the fly.

Here is a fun little flow chart to help you get in the Battle Rezzing mindset! Click on it to make it bigger and not so squished!

 

(Angry Tree Image from Murloc Parliament)

How do you pick who you will rez? Does your raid leader dictate who and when someone will be rezzed?

Happy Healing!

Rejuv, Rejuv, Rejuv, Flash of Light……!?

I love healing. That should probably be tattooed across my forehead. I heal in everything that I can. WoW, D&D, World of Darkness, you name a game with a healer class and I probably have played that class if I have played the game. It is engrained in me, and I am not going to say that is a bad thing. Hanging out with mostly guys my whole life, I just sort of fell into that role. In D&D they all wanted to play Barbarians, in WoW it was Hunters, Warlocks, Tanks; none of my friends wanted to heal. So to ensure that our groups would not die all the time, I would just take on that role. But I felt at home doing it. There were sometimes when I rebelled and played a Psion or a Deathknight, but when someone else would heal and would not be doing it the way I would have (I do not want to say incorrectly, because it was the right way for them) I would get frustrated and back to being a healer I would go. I guess you can say I found my niche right?

Well you already know I Druid heal, but what about other healing classes? Let’s start with Shammy, I was horrible the one and only time I tried it as a level 80! Priest went well, I actually leveled a disc priest and I enjoyed it. I never tried healing as a Monk (oi!). What about Paladin you ask?! Well I have a lot of Paladins, and I always level them ret (I really like hitting things in the face with a HUGE weapon in my free time). But a call to arms has been challenged to me and I have been healing as a holy Pally on the Horde side. Let me just say it is different, so very different, but I am having a blast. This is such a new challenge for me. The way Druids heal and the way Paladins heal is extremely different. The way I like to heal as a Druid is for me to make sure that EVERYONE has full health. Yes, tanks and healers have priority, but I really hate to see anyone be down negative health.  It hurts my soul. This means that I love to throw out Rejuv’s to any and every one. I am a HoT roller to the max.

Then there are Paladins who cannot HoT roll, but have to heal in other ways. Now, I am not max level yet, so I am sure I will find other and better ways, but currently my husband and I are leveling as Recruit-a-Friend and only running dungeons to level since he is a tank (Druid) and I am a healer and we get instant dungeons pops. We have made 52 levels in about 4 hours. Insane right?  But so far this is all I need to do: Holy Shock, Flash Heal, Flash Heal, Holy Shock, Flash Heal, Flash Heal, Holy Shock, and Word of Glory. I have to say that I am kind enjoying healing this way, and not everyone can be topped off at all times (which is my biggest stressor). Well, they mostly are since these are easy dungeons but there are times when I am just tank spamming. I think that as I climb up the food chain in levels and get more abilities I will feel way more confident and enjoy it even more!

I need to do some Paladin healing research, especially if I want to raid. It is a different world, but I think I will enjoy it. Broaden out my healing skills so to speak. Who knows, maybe playing a Paladin will help me not be so obsessive about keeping people topped off on my Druid…probably not though.

Any great Paladin healing sites that you use? Pop them in the comments and help get me on my way! And stay tuned for next time when I talk about UIs!

Happy Healing!

Back into the Groove

What can I say; two small children take up most of your WoW time, heck, even just your free time suffers. But since the baby is now older and sleeping well and through the night, WoW has taken over our nightly routine again. Frankly, this could not make me happier! I love spending my free time WoWing it up. I’m in a more casual guild, which is great for when there are children issues, and I still get to raid. Win win! I think it helps take a lot of the pressure off. If we cannot raid because of family issues it is ok, everyone is very understanding. It makes me think back to the hardcore raiding days where we spent HOURS, yes you read that correctly, HOURS just prepping for a raid. Plus we would spend hours raiding (about 15 hours a week). I was the healing coordinator for our guild and this is when it was very important to have healers in the right groups because of buffs and in certain proximity due to game mechanics. For 10 mans it was not so bad, but in 25 mans, I would print out floor plans and draw up where everyone would be standing. That was a ton of work. I was also the DKP master and we let you use the points for the boss you would just kill, talk about a numbers nightmare. I will not lie; there are times where I miss that type of raiding. There was a certain thrill to it, and the sense of accomplishment that was there when you finally got that boss down that you spent so much time preparing for. Not that I do not feel that now being more casual, I definitely do, but when you are competing to be the first guild on the server with ten people to have the Armani War Bear from Zul’aman, that is a rush.

Now that I am getting back into the raiding scene, I have been feeling confident and comfortable with my abilities. Everyone knows that when you have not ridden a bike for a while it can take a minute until you are not shaky. WoW is the same. You fudge a little bit, you might miss heal a tank (opps), or sometimes you might just not have the finger groove anymore. Trust me, it gets better. Research your class, learn your spells, and make sure you are not missing something.

Over the next week or so, I am going to do a few posts about addons, healing as a WoD druid, and show off my UI a bit since it has changed since this post and this post.

Happy Healing!

PS – I love the Garrisons, such a fun aspect they added to the game! The missions are like a city building game to me, you know the ones where you have to build a building and come back in an hour so you can build another building? I get addicted to those, so yes I am on WoW at 5:45 am every morning doing my Garrison missions, no judgement…

Mouseover Macros – Easy Healing for All!

Through the Eyes of a Tree

There are many different ways a person can heal. Healbot, Clique, Vuhdo (which I am still in the process of checking out), and just basic clicking. My favorite method that I have been using is called mouseover macros. Mouseover Macros are a simple way to heal that can shave seconds off your healing.

Let’s start with the basics. A mouseover macro is one that can be used with any general party frame system, ie Grid, Pitbull, general WoW UI, ect. When you put your mouse over the player, you can hit your keybound spell and it will cast it on them without you having to click on the player.

Now many may ask how this can make your healing more effective. While you may not notice, most systems have a lag time from when you click on a target to when you are actually able to cast the spell. Whether…

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