man raid leaders can be assholes.

and then cadey made it into this xD ~ ( under here )

I went to 10man Ulduar with Twelve tonight. We were just clearing up to the keepers for the leet hardmode group to finish off tomorrow. All good with me, I don't mind getting saved.. haven't even done 10man for weeks.

As soon as I accepted the invite I went to adjust my UI for raid & realised I hadn't tested it with a vehicle yet. o_o I've had problems with vehicle bars not showing up in the past. So I ran to Icecrown and jumped on one of the harpoon guns. Badness. No harpoon abilities on my bars. However the abilities worked when I pressed number keys.

So I flew over to Ulduar, thinking "oh god please put me on something easy". I'd driven all the vehicles, and had been a demolisher gunner in the past. So I know what abilities are there, it was just a matter of remembering which went to which key.. mostly I was just hoping I wouldn't have to do anything complicated like loading myself up to be shot to the boss or anything (which I've only done once before). Luckily I was given the very easy job of siege gunner, which is the only one I hadn't done before. It was easy enough to figure out where my abilities were with some experimentation.

We got Leviathan down after a couple of wipes (left some towers up). Then continued to Razorscale. It was here that I decided that I fucken hate Grid. I don't know if it was just the way I had it set up, but not being able to see my bubbles/renews/PoMs etc on peoples' bars was incredibly annoying, also those tiny little boxes? No thankyou. I switched back to HealBot after the fight.

Overall I was pretty disappointed with my heals. I just didn't get into that smooth healing zone, I was a bit all over the place and my cooldowns felt slightly off or something. Could either be the new UI, the brand new computer I'm using that I haven't raided on before, the fact that I haven't raided in a while, the fact that I was raiding with Twelve, or the cold I have that is making me feel like my head's stuffed with cotton wool - I don't know. :P In any case I need to stop watching heal metres when I'm disc. Or get that recount addon that shows disc contributions.

It was interesting, seeing the little differences between Twelve's strats and TF's strats. Some of the strategies we used were in order to go for achievements (of which I got a few :D). Kiting Kologarn's eyebeams was.. an experience (never did that with TF). lol :P Overall it was a pretty fun raid. :) Now I must go tweak my UI some more (i.e. get rid of Grid & replace it with Pitbull raidframes).

The last two nights, I've been on Ulduar sitout. Earning dkp & still able to grind rep for my crazy Insane achievement? Awesome. I can't grind Steamwheedle rep, because I can't reset Dire Maul due to being in the Ulduar raid group. But I've been farming heaps of Ravenholdt rep - got 6000 rep through to Honored last night, and 3000 more rep today. I've got my rep route through Stromgarde Keep, I know where every mob spawns, it's just a matter of putting myself on autorun & chucking SW:P on everything I see. Although I only get 5 rep per mob, the mobs are only around level 35, so they go down in a couple of seconds. I get interrupted sometimes. Lowbies are questing in the area & get pissed off when I run past & take down all their mobs. Today a rogue & a lock, both around level 35, tried taking me down - the lock feared me, and the rogue stunlocked me. I got pissed off at the interruption and raped their fases, then camped them for about 15min. :P

Tonight I actually got called into Ulduar for Mimiron. Earlier today I'd revamped my UI completely, I went from this to this. Very different, and making much use of invisible bars. I also finally decided to switch from HealBot to Grid + Clique. But because I haven't ever used Grid + Clique before, I was way too nervous to use it when I was called in.. so I used HealBot. When I switched UIs, I had to redo all my HealBot binds, and I think I mistyped Prayer of Healing, because when I tried to use it, it didn't work. Also, my bind for Pain Suppression didn't work. The result: I stood there spamming my PS bind when I was supposed to use it, saw nothing was happening, targeted the tank in a panic and manually cast it from one of my (invisible) bars (thank god I actually put it on there). And my heals were atrocious. I am not used to being so bad on that fight. I've always been holy for Mimiron in the past, because awesome raid heals are needed for phase 2, so doing it as disc was.. different. I did survive the entire fight, but that wasn't difficult - I was there for all of TF's progression encounters and a billion times after that, so I know the fight pretty damn well. Just.. heals were bad. When I realised my Prayer of Healing wasn't working I was kinda like "ugh" and just tried shield spamming and casting lots of PoMs and Renews. My Divine Hymn got interrupted dammit. :P

Anyways. I'd been waiting to get a chance to show Twelve that I'm not the nub I was when I was last in the guild. Hopefully the fact that I didn't die on Mimi indicated something of that at least. I was so nervous though, lol. :P And, I didn't really know who my heal target was, I mean there were two holy pallies there I think so I guess I was raid heals. Raid healing as disc: a great way to show the guild my potential lolol. Should have gone holy, but it all happened so fast after I was summoned in. I was slightly disappointed that I didn't get to go on with them to Thorim, because I think I shine as disc on that fight - shield spam ftw in the arena. :D But really I'm just happy that they let me come in for something. ^_^

Note to self for next time I'm called in: Make your damn raid stuffs bar visible without mousing over. Said bar has my Divine Hymn macro, pots, shadowfiend, Desperate Prayer & other useful things.

Current progress on Insane:
Bloodsail Buccaneers: Honored (done)
Steamwheedle Cartel
Booty Bay: 9550/36000 Hated
Gadgetzan: 9425/36000 Hated (this is less than the others cos I stupidly killed some guards in Gadget when I stupidly tried to use the flight path)
Ratchet: 9550/36000 Hated
Winterspring: 9550/36000 Hated
Shen'drelar: 2500/3000 Neutral
Ravenholdt: 3040/12000 Honored
Darkmoon Faire: 75/3000 Neutral

I spent the last couple of days nursing my bruised ego, from my crap performance in Naxx & h Oculus, by doing quests & dailies, and working on my rep with Wyrmrest (there's several things I want from them) and Sons of Hodir, as well as healing a couple of low level instances for Death to improve my healing confidence. I respecced deep disc, and I am fucking loving it. Penance is awesome, and I love my Divine Aegis too. It also makes soloing a hell of a lot more fun. I think I'm pretty good as a single target healer in 5 mans.. flash heal/renew/PoM/Prayer of Healing are working pretty well for me also when I need to heal multiple targets. I'm finding I'm not using Greater Heal much at all anymore, but it's not hurting me, at least healing 5 mans.

Tonight many of Twelve's more advanced players had gone off to a big meet they're having (which is going to be held over the next few days), but Fuzo - not being able to go due to work commitments - wanted to finish off Naxx, namely Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. There weren't many people left around who could go, and he was looking for a healer. I didn't volunteer - even though I would love to get me some t7 helm from Kel'Thuzad - because I am so undergeared & still smarting from my last experience in Naxx. But Fuzo asked me if I could go, and I told him I was undergeared, and deep disc, but I'd go if they'd have me.. and so I ended up going along.

I had read up on the strat for both bosses beforehand, but that didn't prepare me for them at all. Sapphiron was horribly difficult. It's a really, really healing intensive fight where all healers really have to be on their game. Everyone in the raid takes a lot of damage, and as disc I don't have any aoe heals, except for Prayer of Healing which definitely wouldn't cut it at the rate people were losing hp. At first I tried penance healing the tank as well as the rest of the raid, and just couldn't keep up at all. After a couple of wipes using this tactic, I switched to raid healing, using PoM/renew/shields/flash heal liberally, and did a lot better. There's a lot of running around involved though, hiding behind iceblocked people & such, so it was very hard - I couldnt stay close to the mana totems for long, and kept running out of mana really fast - I was oom by the time we got him down to 50% every time. Damn that one pot per fight rule. >< I don't see how I could have not run out of mana though, as I just had to keep up the heals to keep people up since my heals are still small. I also need to improve my mana regen obviously. We wiped many times. It was suggested a couple of times that I go respec holy, but seriously I'm not sure that would have helped. My spellpower/mana regen is still too low for this place.

In the end we got him down though. It felt damn good. I was exhausted, I worked my ass off in that fight. >< We moved on to Kel'Thuzad, which was a much easier fight to heal, though I still oomed. We managed to one shot him though. :) My helm didnt drop but a nice wand did, which Fuzo won. :)

Afterwards, the group wanted to go on and do Sartharian at Ob Sanctum, another 10 man. T7 gloves drop for me from him, and so I told Fuzo I'd be in if they'd have me. I'd also read up on the strat for this boss, which seemed simple enough - easier than what we'd just done, anyways. Clearing the trash and the drakes surrounding the boss was easy. We left one drake up, because the more of them you leave up the better loot drops from the boss. The downside is that you need to fight the drakes you leave up at the same time as fighting Sartharian. Fighting the drakes isn't particularly simple either - they summon a portal while you're fighting them, which all of the raid except the main tank & main healer have to enter & kill an add inside while the drake hits the main tank for a lot more. So anyway we left one drake up, and went in to fight the boss. Sartherian himself is a pretty simple tank n spank, with periodic lava waves which are pretty easy to avoid and fire elemental adds. Fighting him at the same time as one of the drakes though, proved to be too much for our group. We wiped a few times before finally deciding to do the boss "easy mode" and kill the drake off beforehand. We one shot him this way. I can't imagine how crazy it must be if you leave all three drakes up. >< My t7 gloves dropped, but Fuzo won them. :) I was just happy they let me come along for the ride - they really did carry my undergeared ass through, I was only doing 20% of the heals. It was good to get some experience with these new bosses, and I don't think I did terribad considering (especially on that fucking Sapphiron). ^_^

I have been doing some reading, and discussing CoH with the wonderful people over at wow_ladies, and have learned some things.

1. Minimum recommended spellpower for Naxx is ~1500. Mine is just scraping 1200.
2. The boss we were doing in Naxx, Patchwerk, is a gear check boss. He hits the person with the highest hp who is not the main tank.. i.e., that offtank I was supposed to heal. Not so stupid after all that I mentioned that the other two healers are better than me. I knew that DK was losing hp much faster than an offtank normally would.
3. CoH should only be used if the tanks are stable, and if there are 3-5 people in my vicinity who need healing. CoH spam will just run me out of mana. Rotation otherwise should be PoM every cooldown, keep renews up, and keep tank shielded, with flash & greater heals my primary spells. I was doing this anyway, with the exception of shielding the tank.. need to figure out where I can work that into my healbot clicks.
4. My talent build is crappy. DS is not relevant anymore, because it has been made obsolete by a shaman totem. I should respec deep holy if I want CoH.
5. Deep disc is a viable raiding spec now. I should discuss with Twelve whether they want me deep disc or deep holy.
6. I should stop levelling my enchanting on my own gear, and make sure I have proper enchants before I attempt raiding.

so yeh, I feel a bit more confident now.

Panadoll went along with some guildies to Naxx tonight. We did ok up until our main healer dc'd and we proceeded to wipe numerous times on the first boss. I feel a little depressed about it, because when Fuzo asked me to heal the DK offtank by myself, I said I didn't think I could do it alone & Leo & Ipally were better healers than me - which they are, but that was a little beside the point. After that the raid broke up. I really do not like healing DK tanks, perhaps it's just because the ones I've encountered haven't quite been up to tanking. They lose hp so fast and even if I do nothing but spam greater heal on them I can't keep up. I don't have much haste at all anymore either, which makes things worse.

I also felt stupid when I suggested I go pick up the higher ranks of CoH that I'd neglected to get when I respecced. Fuzo said "don't tell me you're using CoH" which I wasn't - because I didn't have the higher ranks - and that for this boss all I should be using is greater heal. From what I've experienced of CoH thusfar (and I admit, I haven't had much experience with it at all) it seems to be a very useful thing to use when multiple targets are losing health at the same time. I understand that under normal circumstances CoH wouldn't be used in that fight, but that DK... both of them, the tank and offtank, were losing hp pretty much at the same time, and incredibly fast, and I feel like CoH wouldn't have been entirely out of place. I have a particular healing style which usually works well for me, and it doesn't involve many greater heals. I use lots of renews, PoM, and flash heal (where I used to downgrade greater heal). I don't usually use spells with long cast times, like greater heal, especially now since my haste is so crap. CoH fits in really well with my style. But it's all situational - there will be times of course when I'll spam greater heal on a tank taking a beating. My healing style's been working for me, so I feel like I know somewhat what I'm doing.. but I know that Fuzo has healed for a hell of a lot longer than me.. so my confidence has been crushed a bit, and a little worried that people in the guild won't want me to heal anymore, cos I did look a bit stupid.

I was desperate to heal a heroic after that, just to reassure myself that I'm not terribad, but Death and Xan had already enlisted me to heal normal Nexus. So I went & did that.. it was really easy & boring, and didn't restore any of my faith in myself. Hopefully I can find a group for a heroic or two tomorrow. I wish my brother hadn't respecced back to resto so I could do heroics with him. :(

Today's been interesting. Did my dailies and mucked around with Panacea a bit, went & did Mara with Leth for luls & achievement, then got a few battle tokens in Halaa. Tonight I was supposed to heal Stratholme for Death and Xan, but I pulled out at the last minute to go to Tempest Keep with Twelve. I feel really bad about it but.. seeing as much content as I can & progressing on Panadoll is always my main priority. Death if you're reading this, I'm really sorry I bailed. >< There's just so little time left til the expansion and I really want to do as much as I can with Panadoll before it hits.

TK was cool :D It was great to get a a chance to see it. And my new Healbot bindings are so win. I'm doing heaps better and really enjoying raid healing now.. more than instance healing. I know I shouldn't watch healing metres because they really don't mean much, but I can't help liking seeing my name crawl closer to the top. >< The only depressing thing was the amount of awesome healy stuff that dropped, and my crappy crappy rolls. Leokadia got just about all of it - which is awesome for her, and she looks so cool now. :D I did get Talisman of the Sun King from Alar though, so at least I came out of there with something. :) I wonder if there's a chance of them going back again before xpac...

After TK, the raid reformed a bit and we went to do Hyjal. I enjoyed myself a lot more than my first time there, since I wasn't flailing about so much not knowing what's going on, and my healing style is decidedly better. But the server announced it was going down just as we were getting to Kaz'rogal. We were in the middle of fighting him when we were all kicked off. Right now we're waiting around to see if the server will come back up again so we can finish the run off. I really hope so... I really would like some more loots.. particularly those legs from Archi ><...

Panadoll healed heroic Mech tonight, with Yuge tanking and Death dpsing (I've missed her lately ><). and a couple other dps of course :P Panadoll's new heal bindings are Awesome. :D I'm still getting the hang of them, cos they're a lot more complicated than I'm used to. But I feel like I have heaps more control this way. I wish I had realised the usefulness of Prayer of Healing before now. :P

Earlier in the day Panacea went to normal Slabs with guildies. It was normal because a few people hadn't been there before, and I found myself explaining the strat for bosses & pulls on Vent all the way through. It was good practise for raid leading I think. That stupid spellcloth pattern still refused to drop off Murmur though. ><

I need a new mic, I think mine (which I've had since the late 90s o_o) has finally died. A headset might be nice... :)

My performance healing on Panadoll has been getting me down lately. I haven't been doing as well as I'd like. So today I did lots of reading. And then I went & rebound all my Healbot clicks. They are now:

Left click - Renew
Shift-Left - Greater Heal
Ctrl-Left - Prayer of Healing

Right click - Flash Heal
Shift-Right - Binding Heal

Button4 click - Prayer of Mending
Shift-Button4 - Power Word: Shield

Middle click - Dispel Magic
Shift-Middle - Abolish Disease

It's a lot to remember & quite different to my old bindings. Before I was only using Renew, Greater Heal, Flash Heal & Prayer of Mending all bound to left clicks + modifiers, and Dispel Magic/Abolish Disease bound to right clicks + modifier. I'm hoping with these new bindings I'll become more efficient with healing. But I'm going to need some practise with them. >< Healbot shows what clicks will do what on mouseover of the target name so that should help somewhat. I want to practise by getting a group of SotM guildies + awesome Yuge tankage together to run some heroics.. less pressure than a PuG. Also I need more HH and Sha'tar rep for Panadoll. :P

Lots of good stuff happened today! :D

This evening Lutzi (on Fuzo) wanted to go back and finish off the Kara we did on Saturday night, before it reset. Yay for no maintenance tonight! :D Yuge was set to come too, but his computer crashed before invites went out, and he had to spend the next 3 hours reinstalling Windows, which sucked. But I nervously asked Lutzi if I would be welcome to come along to Kara anyway, and he invited me. :) He's my friend but it was still kinda generous on his part, as he was looking for really good (i.e. t6) healers to speed up the run.. and I am not one of those. :P At first, waiting around outside Kara, I wasn't sure we'd actually go ahead with it, because we were having a lot of trouble convincing the uber healers of Twelve to come along. But eventually awesometastic druid Bearilic and awesometastic priest Empithy agreed to join us. There was no way I could possibly keep up with their heals.. i.e....



I have not done any research on any of the Kara bosses after Nightbane, so my strategy was just to stick to the other healers like glue and heal & dispel as best I could. Nightbane (which, you may recall, we wiped on numerous times in the last run) went down extremely easily - the difference in the level of the group was plain to see. I relaxed a bit after that. :P The following bosses were not so difficult for me, apart from Shade of Aran, a fight which was just confusing. I need to read up on it to figure out what was going on. At one point I moved, a second after someone told us not to move on Vent, and was tossed up in the air. There were lots of Vent comments after that of a "who moved?" "who's the noob?" variety. >< So yes.. definitely gonna read up on Aran. I did do better than the first time I was at that boss - where I died instantaneously and just watched the rest of the fight. At least I didn't die this time. :P

I also want to read up on Chess, cos I really have no idea what is going on there. :P

I was hoping for a t4 helm drop from Prince, but didn't get it. :( I did however get Pantaloons of Repentance from Netherspite. :D And after the raid was over, I discovered that I now had 50 badges, so I spent them on Cowl of Naaru Blessings. :D No more Red Pointy Hat of fail, finally! That's my last green item gone. :D I gemmed up the new gear and now my heals are at an awesome 1335 (almost leet, heh). xD Yayyy~!

Here's my new hat!



and a few ( screenshots from Kara )

In Panacea news, she dinged level 40 today! :D I respecced her also, and put all her points into shadow (I am too impatient to wait another 10 levels for shadowform :P). I'm thinking I'll put points for the next few levels back into disc.



Panacea joined a group for SM arms today. I told the group when I joined that I was happy to heal if needed, but I'd prefer to dps if at all possible. The group leader told me flat out "you heal". >< It was easy enough, even though a couple people in the group were a bit low level for it (early 30's) and I got the annoying "wand please" from the group leader (errrghhhh... no) but I really would like to have a chance at dpsing an instance sometime. :-/ I'll be running SM more in the next few days so hopefully I'll get a group who will let me.

After a very generous donation of primal mooncloth from Yuge, today I made my robe and now I have 3/3 primal mooncloth set! xD Heals are now at 1287 (1235 unbuffed). Happy! I spent way too much monies today on gems though. ><

picture taken in front of the Dark Portal (on my way back from finishing off artisan fishing quest) to match my screenshot taken when I first entered Outland. So I've changed my icon accordingly. :D

Panadoll made some primal mooncloth today. In a couple of weeks - Primal Mooncloth Robe! lol. I should probably get someone to help me make the mooncloth but I am teh lazy. :P

I finally got Panadoll on a run through n Botanica today, with Yuge tanking. It was fun! I think I am getting much better at healing. I used Prayer of Mending for the first time, through the entire run. I read this post about Prayer of Mending (aka Frisbee) on The Egotistical Priest a while ago and thought.. yehhh.. I should really be using that. It was so awesome - especially when the PoM would ding between the tank and the shaman who was getting the second-highest aggro. I love the noise it makes when it dings too. 8D It made it a lot easier to heal when multiple people were getting aggro. Renew is still my absolute favourite HoT though. :D I use it constantly.

Nobody died (besides me) in the whole run, so I think I did a pretty good job. I died twice, but that was Yuge's fault. :P I think I did pretty well with removing debuffs and keeping everyone at almost full health while maintaining my mana. This was also the first run in which I needed on all the blues people didn't want (almost all of them I think) to DE them and divide the shards at the end. When it came time to DE them and people were rolling I was like ahh how does this work?? Do we roll on every shard?? I now realise this would be a stupid and cumbersome way to do it. :P We had 6 shards and I gave one to each party member, except for the person who rolled highest to whom I gave 2. When I started giving them out I kept putting a stack of 20 shards in the trade window and removing it (thinking "what how do I remove just one again? shift-click gah!") Learning! ftw! xD

I am such a noob, haha xD

p.s. I made one of these :D (healing set)

bah, maintenance night. >_< I guess I am kinda glad that Blizzard doesn't usually take our oceanic servers down later on in the night - last week when they did that we got a huge influx of people at 8pm, making things pretty lagtastic.

Anyways. Panadoll got her Primal Mooncloth Shoulders yesterday! :D



I couldn't stomach the thought of farming the 8 primal lifes I needed for them (I've already farmed so many just to make the mooncloth), so I bought the damn things. :P I've made the gold back already with dailies, so it's not too bad. And I've saved myself hours of mind-numbing bog lords. :P Now I need to make the robe. Which requires 12 pieces of mooncloth.. that will take me about 18 days if I make it all myself. I really don't mind the wait though. I've accepted that it's going to take me ages to do all of the things I wanna do in WoW - saving up gold for epic mount & getting exalted with Sha'tari Skyguard in particular - and I have my little Panacea to turn to if I want a faster pace. :)

So Panadoll's heals are at 1200 now. :D Happy! Hopefully I'll get into another Kara soon. Where I could maybe.. just barely.. actually be useful as a healer. :P Yuge's gonna tank n bot for me next (hopefully tomorrow?) so I'm looking forward to that as well. :)

And just randomly - here's a screenie of Panacea dinging level 27 today (I has an addon that takes a screenshot every time I ding). Yay kill 20 Plague Spreaders quest. :3 ( screenshot )