Yay Fire Birdie Down!

My guild went back into Firelands last night (with a new tank and a pug hunter) and managed to down Alysrazor.  And it only took us 5 tries!  Our big problems were our flying dps weren't comfortable flying and dpsing at the same time, and the cyclones in phase 2 were kicking my fellow healer's ass.  However, she managed to live through that phase when her husband told her to just follow him and he'd lead her around.

Firebirdie dropped my new boots (yay) and a dagger that our pug hunter took (what?).  And with that upgrade, I only have 2 pieces that are not 365 or higher.  (My pants and a ring.)

Anyway.  We moved onto Baleroc and beat against him for 3 tries before we had to call it.  The healers (all two of us) couldn't figure it out at first.  However, I've done some reading now (I was not prepared for that boss last night.  Usually we take a short break after a kill but we just moved right along and the husband tried to explain but he didn't explain what the healers have to do, probably because he didn't care.) and I know that we need to rotate.  My shaman buddy kept healing the tank because his health kept dropping.  And I kept healing the DPS because THEIR health was dropping, and then I would throw a heal onto the tank.  It was all messy.

I"m going to talk to my healing buddy tonight and see how we want to approach this.  I was really bummed that my hots won't help stack the buff I need.  Dude.  Way to gimp me!  Ugh.

Anyway.  I have a busy day ahead of me.  I'd best get moving!!

Yay heals!

We went into Firelands last night with 9 guildies and our usual PUG death knight.  Do you know what that means?  Aw yeah, I got to heal with my bestie.  We easily two healed Beth, with only 1 wipe because the downstairs tank took the first web pulley thing and I took the next.  When he realized what he did, instead of staying up and just switching for that phase, he jumped down and (since I had taken my usual 2nd web) Beth turned to ME and ate my face.  We wiped pretty fast after that.

We 1 shot Shannox, despite both puppies eating my face within the first 5 seconds of the encounter.  (The DK battle rezed me.)  I didn't get above 50% mana the entire time.  Heh.  Stupid puppies.

Then we went to Lord Rhyolith and wiped on him 5 times before finally killing him.  That wasn't hard, but I swear that some of my dps went, found the fire, and stood in it.  We did get him to 2nd phase at least 3 times, so we're definately improving on that fight.

Loot wise, I made out like a freaking bandit.  I got the haste caster hat off Beth, and then both pieces off Rhyolith.  He dropped the leather agility hat and the leather caster chest.  I have my tier chestpiece so I'm not going to replace that but I'm looking towards my boomkin set.  The best part is that my 'old' hat, which was the hat from Atramedes (not my tier hat), can now be repurposed for boomkin.  I'm hoping we go back and do Nef or Cho'gall so I can get my tier hat or shoulders so I can have my 4 piece boomkin bonus.

Tonight, we head back in and face down Alysrazor.  I think we can do this if people just learn to 1. fly and 2. dodge shit.  :)  I'm hopeful!

The Great Wild Growth Nerf of PTR 4.3

A lot of bloggers have already discussed this in much better terms then I can.  (Beru, Jasyla, Tzufit and I know that the other Resto bloggers will hit this up as well).  I wouldn't even discuss it but I am feeling a bit betrayed by the developers right now.

We, the resto druids, don't have a damage mitigation cooldown.  In order to 'make up for this', you gave us Tranquility as a 3 minute cooldown.  You buffed our Wild Growth in 4.0.6.  And you gave us absolute crap for glyphs.

Now, I've never been a fan of Wild Growth spamming.  It's not my preferred method of healing.  However, in certain situations it is helpful.  I glyphed my Wild Growth because I do raid and hitting that extra person is very helpful.  (However, half the time I swear it hits people's pets!)

Did this make my output 'better' then other healers?  Yes, a bit.  Last night, after this nerf was announced, I did a bit of number crunching (which I'm really not good at).  I looked at my Wild Growth numbers from a couple weeks ago (since I ran boom last week), and figured out that with a 20% nerf to WG, my numbers would drop by just abut 5%.

And that doesn't include numbers for the new cooldown if I keep my Wild Growth glyphed.  (Which, at this point, I probably won't keep.)

Now, let's talk about Resto glyphs.  From what I see, we have 4, maybe 5 major glyphs for us.  There's Healing Touch (which I didn't have until they nerfed Innervate), Innervate (which is nerfed), Wild Growth, Thorns and Rebirth.  Now, I don't believe in glyphing things I never use.  So why would I glyph Thorns or Innervate?  That leaves behind Wild Growth, Rebirth and Healing Touch.  If you want to make us choose between glyphs, GIVE US GLYPHS TO CHOOSE BETWEEN!

And I swear to the Earthmother, if my husband says to me again that mitigation cooldowns are for tanks, I'm going to punt him into a wall.

Hooray!

It's looking like we're going to have 10 guild members for our raids this week.  That means ... I GET TO HEAL!  YAY!  /dance

I had a really hard weekend, I went on a trip across the state for my nephew's 1st birthday party.  It was very stressful, we left Saturday morning (I spent 12 hours in the car, there and back) and I got home Sunday evening and barely got to log in.  I logged in and just idled.  I was so burned out from driving back and forth that I just wanted to play without anyone pestering me.  So I went to a server that I have a level 5 toon on, where I don't know anyone, and tried to play her.

I ended up having to adjust her interface, so that took me all the time I had before bed.  But I logged her on again on Monday night and got my little goblin warlock to level 12, and out of the starting zone.

I'm trying to decide if I want to find a leveling guild over there or just stay unguilded and all that.  I've never been on a server where I didn't have a community before.  And I actually do know people there, but I haven't contacted them because I'm only level 12 and what if they don't really like me and only tolerate me?  Heh.  I'm such a mess.

Anyway.  If anyone wants to say hi.  My goblin warlock is Annanda on the Llane server.

Firelands - Post Nerf

So, last night we went back into Firelands.  My raid leading husband had texted me a few days ago, as I went to pick up my resto shaman buddy from work, "Talk to CoolShaman about 2 healing".  I kind of rolled my eyes but I brought it up with her when she got into the car.  "What do you think about 2 healing Firelands?"  She thought about it for a few moments and then said "Sure, why not.  We can probably do it!  And if we can AwesomePriest will be there to back us up."  So we had a loose plan.  She and I would try to 2 heal Firelands, as a resto druid and a resto shaman.

Well, Wednesday comes and we can't get the people together.  One of our raiders is sick (food poisoning) and another one just didn't show up.  We picked up our usual 2 old guildy pugs but still weren't able to get into Firelands.  We did Baradon Hold, and 2 healed that.  (We decided to stop 3 healing the new boss when my over heal was 60%.)

Then Thursday comes around.  And we realize that since one of our usual pugs is a holy pally without a dps spec, one of us was going to have to DPS.  Well, my shaman friend just switched her 2nd spec to enhancement but she's not very familiar with it yet and she's not hit capped.  So she decides to switch to elemental for the raid (since my output is higher then hers apparently).

However, as we get to talking, it turns out she doesn't have any kind of real elemental gear, she just does it in her resto gear.  Which is what I do, but I have two pieces of boomkin tier gear to give me a 2 piece bonus.  She decides that I should DPS and she'll heal but if it turns out this isn't working, I would flip back to tree.

We get into Beth'tilac and the pally goes up on the web and my shaman stays down with us.  It takes us two tries but we kill her rather easily.  The only death was my husband's pally tank, but I battle ressed him and we moved on.

Next was Shannox.  I want to say we 1 shot him.  I don't remember and apparently our log for last night isn't up so I can't check.  But that went pretty well.

So we went to Lord Rhyolith and beat against his legs for a while.  Took us 3-4 tries (I think) but we did finally get him.  I did pop tranquility at the phase transition, which I think helped a lot.  It was a messy kill and I think there were 4 or 5 of us laying around holding down the floor after he died, but he did die.  We'd only ever gotten to phase 2 once before, so yay there.

We spent the remaining hour or so trying to clip Alysrazor's wings.  And honestly.  That seemed like a fun fight!!  I was paired with our pug DK to kill things on the left side of the area (left as you look at the cave).  Our flying DPS kept falling, so we kept wiping to that.  But eventually we will get better at that.  It's just a learning curve.

I will admit I saw red when I saw Staghelm kill those poor captured Druids of the Talon.  Oh he just makes me so mad!  Grrrrrr!

I am a bit bummed that I'm progressing through Firelands as a chicken.  I love healing.  It's all I've wanted to do for years now.  But I lost my healing spot to a pug because we need warm bodies.  *sighs*  It sucks so bad.  I am very happy that we have people willing to help us, but all I want to do is heal.  I don't want to be a sucky dps (which I am).  I'm just so sad about it.  I want to heal with my shaman buddy, like we've been doing since Kara.  Oh well.  There's always next expansion I guess.