I Have the Coolest Friends

Really, I do…

I’m scared to say it, because I don’t want to jinx it but dizam, our 10 man group is the bomb.  It feels like we have the best class balance and the best personality balance a group can have.  We steamrolled through last night, taking out Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale, XT, Kologarn, Iron Council, Auriyia, and Hodir.  We had a couple hiccups on Iron Council, but it was stuff we could easily correct and avoid on the next attempt.  Everything else went very smoothly; there was friendly and fun banter on Vent.  Nothing is really getting DE’d because a class isn’t represented, it’s getting DE’d if it’s a duplicate.  We have a pally, a shaman, warrior, druid,  shadow priest, a holy priest, a hunter, deathknight, and 2 mages.  The pulls are getting to be muscle memory and everyone knows what their responsibilities are.  Love it!!

I did have the funniest thing happen on Razorscale.  We had just finished up Flame Leviathan and headed to Razor when my little one started fussing, so I needed to AFK for a quick 2 mins to get him back to sleep.  When I came back, they said “Ok as soon as Sinny gets back, we’ll start it up”.  And I said I was back on Vent and then looked at my shapeshifting bar… Hm, where’s my tree… OH NO! “WAIT WAIT WAIT WAIT” I hit N and click Activate for my resto spec… “too late, we just started it up”.  I thought I had gotten it in time but then I see “Entering Combat” and my spec switch stops mid stream.  “uh guys? I’ll be dps’ing for this…” It was really fun, too : )  We got the achievement for A Quick Shave even.

We had one wipe on Hodir, I can’t even really remember what went wrong, but when we did our 2nd attempt, we got the I Have the Coolest Friends achievement.  I think the only fight that I had mana issues on was Iron Council and I think that was mainly because I was healing our Pally tank and I’m not used to healing him so I can’t anticipate his damage yet.  I had a lot of overhealing on that fight from spamming Nourish and constant Blooms.  I’ll be conscious of that on our next encounter with The Council and see what I can do to be more efficient with my mana.

The Badlands

Before the raid started, I finished up a couple quests that I had in my quest log.  Trying to make room for Loremaster craziness.  I did one quest that was inside Uldaman, but not actually *in* the instance and it didn’t count towards my total.  So I abandoned the rest of the chain for the time being.  Sure it would count towards my Seeker achievement but I’ll have that without problem when I have Loremaster (the big Loremaster, not just Classic) done. 

Blog Front

As it pertains to this blog, I’m tweaking some of my layout.  I’m learning more about blogging from practice-makes-better-but-not-perfect and reading other blogs and seeing what elements I like as a reader.  So, stay tuned and hope you (the one or two people who are reading) enjoy it! :)

Loremaster Ysinnia?

 

Not quite yet.  But I think I’ve decided to start working on this as my next large project.  I’m going to finish up the Argent Crusader assignment that I got on the Achievement forums and then not ask for another assignment.  This is a huge undertaking because when I leveled this toon in Classic WoW, I didn’t quest very much.  I think I’m something like 160 short on Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor is something like 300 short, I haven’t looked recently.  I just know it’s a number that when my brain sees it, it goes “oh god, so many to go!”.

I’ve been kicking the idea around in my head lately, but it’s not something you just jump into, ya know?  I mean, I HAVE TO MAKE LISTS.  AND PLAN.  Yeah, I’m like that.  So my first order of business, after completing my current assignment, is to make a list of each zone starting with the lowbie/starting zones.  I know I did some of the Human starting area when I was grinding out my Ambassador title, but I think I stopped around the Goldshire area.  Not just because I hit exalted, but because when you hang out near Goldshire too long on Argent Dawn, you have to bathe frequently and you get a rep for “hanging in Goldshire wink wink”. 

So, lists of starting areas and then to Wowhead.com to start pulling lists of quests in the zone.  I also have to remember to hit the Easy to Miss thread on the Quest forums.  There are a ton of quests there that I’m sure I missed.  I need to give myself a deadline for completing it and I won’t know a realistic timeline until I see everything laid out on paper.  I do know that I’m going to make a timeline for the entire Achievement, not just Eastern Kingdom or Kalimdor.  There are too many quests that shuffle you between continents, so I want to take it as a natural progression of zones and quests and not try to get hung up on watching one specific continent. 

Such planning!  Who would have thought you could translate your OCD into an Achievement!? : )  Anyway, that’s my summer goal. 

News from the Front

We had a fantastic run last night in Ulduar25.  Life found me with some playtime unexpectedly and I checked with the healing lead to see if I was needed as a backup or anything and they did have a spot.  Their first night in the raid was Tuesday so we were up to Auriaya last night.  It was a bit tricky getting the pull coordinated but once the pull clicked, it just took some old fashioned pinching and pulling to get everyone to fit right.  I even got to dps!  Of course, that was after 4 of the 6 healers were dead, we’d lost our main tank, both off tanks, and about half of the dps.  She was at 1% so I started pew pew wrath wrath cuz I didn’t really have anyone to heal ; )

I did notice one amazing thing during this fight.  I spammed Nourish and all my hots on our MT for the entire fight and only one time did I notice that I was below 50% mana.  One time.  I usually try to hit my Spirit Glass Trinket once kind of early in the fight, once again when we are about halfway and then it’s up for the end when things are getting tight.  I instinctively hit my trinket and then glanced at my mana and I was at 80%.  Hardly any desperate need for a quick regen but I used the opportunity to throw a few hots on myself to alleviate some of the other healers mana. 

We headed on over to Iron Council after that and after a couple false starts and some reassignments, we were able to down them.  I have to say, I much prefer experiencing the fight vertical, as opposed to the 10 man version I did Wednesday night when I was busy healing the floor.  I picked up the heroic Achievement for I Choose You, Stormcaller, also.  So I’m helping rez people and didn’t really look at the loot.  I never do, really.  Now that we get our badges auto-looted, who needs to?  So when the Master Looter linked all the items in Raid, I had to scroll back up to make sure I read it right.  Phaelia’s Vestments of the Sprouting Seed!  I whispered the Master Looter with the !command to find out how much dkp I had, confident that I had more than the other resto druid I breathed a sigh of relief.  I felt slightly guilty because I had picked up a really nice chest the night before in 10 man, but this was THE chest I had been hoping for since stepping foot in Ulduar. 

Flame on!

Before the raid started, I finished up the Flame Warden Meta Achievement after stealing and turning in the Undercity flame.  Apparently I had gotten credit for Silvermoon City but not Undercity during the reset of the quests earlier in the week.  4 more holidays to go before I can check off that section!

Back in the healing groove

 

What’s this other stance…hmmm Moonkin

When I was leveling from 70 to 80, everyone kept telling me to just go Balance, and that it would be easier. Nahh, I’ll stick with Resto. I always believed, and pretty much still do, that you can’t just level a dps spec and then bam! hit 80 and know how to heal. I need to know what all my stuff does, and I learn that by using it over and over in instances and leveling while questing. So I hit 80, I’m healing Naxx and various instances and questing. Well, trying to quest. Dailies took forever! With the introduction of the dual spec option, my questing life improved 1000%. My healing life, I’m afraid, is suffering. The first time I did my dailies as boomkin, I finished about 20-30 minutes sooner than normal. I almost cried I was so happy! With my limited playtime, I’m almost always in my boomkin spec. Because of this, my reflexes are a bit slower than they normally are when I’m healing more frequently. Cuz really, does it matter if stuff dies in 2 seconds or 3, it’s all pew pew and I’m not trying to top the dps charts when I’m grinding Hodir rep. But the 1 second difference is everything when healing.

Healing is fun, I … Ooo is that something shiny?!

The other night, I appealed with puppy dog eyes to Belghast to tank Old Kingdom for me - it’s one of two kills I still needed for my Champion of the Frozen Wastes title. He rounded up some folks and we were off, to a place I’d never been. Instead of being on my toes like I normally would, I lost focus and trailed off to loot something instead of sticking with my tank. Wipe #1. Bel has ADD when it comes to tanking and as a healer, I know that - I just forgot briefly what I was doing. After all, no one cares if the dps stops to loot something. After a couple close calls and a few deaths o’ dps, sorry guys L , we made it to the Insanity fight. Bleh. The first try, everyone had trouble with the tree, and the tree was being a nub and trying to kill the people attacking me. So, second try - I stood and healed myself. Helpless as I watched my parties’ health bars drop ever so slowly, and on vent listening to their frustrations with killing “the tree”. Third try, and possibly fourth before they were finally able to kill the tree and call it a night, having checked off that part of my achievement requirement. Now, if *I* were that indestructible, that would be awesome! Sometimes in a raid, I feel like I’m made of paper - but honestly in a raid I’m not standing there healing myself the whole time. The next step is the Malygos fight and while it doesn’t matter if I do it on 10 or 25, I have the quest for 25 man so I’d like to get it all done in one shot. Guess I need to make sure I’m not rusty on the dragon flyers.

It’s a mana pool, can I go swimming?

I had the chance to redeem myself (at least, to myself) last night when I healed Ulduar 25 for the XT fight and also a couple Kolgarn attempts. I came in as a backup healer as the raid was shorthanded and was losing another healer due to RL stuff. I found I was managing my mana pool a bit better than I had in the last couple raids, and I still love my Spirit-World Glass trinkie and used it a bit more effectively also. Overall, I was pretty happy with my mana management and look forward to being able to test out a few tweaks to my healing rotation. I think I used Nourish more effectively, and while I always make sure my target has a hot on them to get the real benefit of Nourish, sometimes I get a little Regrowth happy. Maybe it’s the pretty green icon, maybe it’s the placement of my button. I’m a clicker, sue me. I’m actually working on revamping my entire UI and will get some screenies once I’m happy with a more final draft of it. Maybe it’s silly but I tend to get in a rut and if I need to change things, then I need to CHANGE things - like, the placement of all my abilities, like the appearance of my head’s up display, etc. It’s all gotta change for me to make the extra tweaks to my healing rotation. God I’m high maintenance =)