Heal or Kill

So since 3.1 came out I have been up to a bit of fun. Edy has been doing her Edy best to let Snuggles feast on as many hides as she can be it raiding, dailies, or teaching a dk that some of us DO still play BM specced. Ty, on the other hand, has been plunged head first into healing and its been quite the ride for her.

Since my runs of the reg 80 stuff my guild has seen fit to push me along the fast track of healing. I am asked to heal my first herioc by another tank in training and step foot for the first time as heals in heroic Gun Drak. We started out rocky again with me being a little too close when poison nova went off so I hit the ground like a drunk frat boy on a sunday morning and we wipe pretty fast. That out of the way everything went nice and smooth till the last boss when he decided non-shall pass and raped up royally. We got through that night because my friend was with us on his dk and went frost after the tank dropped which was just long enough to down him though the second time we did this run we had to call it after about 5 wipes just cause I couldn't keep up with the armor reduction that he puts on the tank and he would drop before I could get any sort of big heal or LoH off. I will get use to it in time I just need more practice and I have 2 great healers to which I am padawan and I know can give me tips on these types of things.

Last big test was an OS 10 man run where it started out with just me and our fearless GM healing and due to what I think was a glitch we wiped about 3 times on the first drake (I say glitch because the dps that went in the portal was hit so hard with the portal aoe they dropped as soon as they zoned and that didnt happen when I ran OS earlier that week on Edy). We get in a PUG druid to help but it might as well have just been me and Ru still because mostly the guy just overhealed the hell out of our MT and just kinda left raid healing in the air. In fact 3 drake I was pretty much solo healing the raid in the portal because the druid apparently thought the MT was way more important that the dps killing the drake even though it was apparent that he WASN'T going to drop. All in all it was a huge confidence boost to be able to keep up with real healers in that and definately made me happy.

On Edy's end I am still observing where I stand in a raid environment as a beast mastery hunter in a survival is king world. What I see as my answer is "pretty damn well". I haven't really had anybody try and preach to me the evils of BM in raiding since that lovely fellow of a lock in that Maly run but I still see people that swear by SV for raiding and I seen the numbers that "should" happen when you play SV. Armed with the knowledge of these numbers and a better concept of sv rotation I decided to give it another shot. I try it on the dummy and all works like its suppose to and I am indeed out dpsing my BM spec so I decide to give it a shot in H Oculus. Surprise, surprise same result as when I was in Maly. Damage was way sub-par to my BM damage and again I switch, leave my meter alone and just watch my dps catch the others in the run with just a few pulls. Sunday sealed the deal for me when my boyfriend asks me to run 25 Naxx with his guild and there is an SV hunter in much better gear than my own and I am not far behind him in the damage. So your girl stayed true to her BM tree and in turn Blizzard has worked out some of the kinks for her and she is onces again in a stable place. Is the spec perfect? No and Blizz is still working on some of the issues with pets and hunter mechanics in general. It is a set up from that depression BM entered with 3.0.8. That right there is all I need.

Isn't That Interesting

Well the last two days I have had the opportunity to actively use dual spec and I must say its shown me something interesting. Yes, it's still buggy but it simply clears my pet points on Edy so that's something I can deal with and with Ty I have yet to have any issues arise.

Starting with Ty, I've gotten to heal two instances with some guildies and my boyfriend for some practice and I think I'm starting to get the hang of healing a bit better. We did Culling of Stratholme and Utgarde Pinnacle today and both went very well. Only one real wipe happened when Meathook decided I was his special friend and he wanted to keep me in place with his chains so I couldn't keep up at all with the healing but other than that nothing else went too wrong. Had a few "fugde!" moments but I managed to heal through them and general I think it went well and I will love healing with Ty at this rate.

Edy on the other hand had a rather interesting night of discovery in my second venture into Maly's house. I noticed something odd the other day when I set up my second spec for SV but I didn't think too much about it. I dont know a thing about SV dps so I figured I just didnt have much of a rotation to see the dps that supposed to be there. I tried once in Naxx to use SV and had the exact same low dps problem so again I chalked it up to not really knowing the spec. Last night proved there was an issue however. From the first time I went in EoE I knew dpsing as a BM hunter was gonna be a problem just because I am so dependant on my pet and that is not really a very pet friendly fight so I decided what better place to open up SV and see what its got for me than a fight I have to dps more on my own. So I did and I was almost shocked by how bad I did. Even not knowing a good rotation I should have done alot better dps than 1.6k in that fight but 1.6k is exactly what I got and my damage was laughable. So one wipe down I say bump that and switch back to BM and summon Gaz and her space lazer so my pet has some range on it. At this point there was a little down time since one of our healers was in a foul mood and decided to opt out to calm himself and one of the warlocks takes an interest in me being in bm mode:

Him: Bm is bad you should be SV fo sho.
Me: I was in SV that last fight. I only got 1.6k dps that whole time so I am switching.
Him: But BM is bad... (pause) in your gear you should do way more in SV than you can in BM.
Me: Thats nice but it wasn't working so lets see how this works. I dont know SV very well anyway.
Him: Whats to know? Black Arrow, serpent sting, explosive shot, steady shot, multi shot rinse repeat
Me: Yes thats what I was basically doing so now I am gonna try this and see how it goes I know I can do my part of the dps in BM

At this point he leaves me be for the next five minutes then decides "she is a retard i am all knowing and as such will embarasse her infront of all present" and calls me out in vent on it. I just smile and nod. This dude is from a guild I have run with before and in general dont like because they are know it alls so I just wait for us to start. So we do and we wipe before second phase because we just dont have the right heals for it. And after I bring it up again in raid chat.

Me: See I did 2.1k just in that little span and 2xs the damage.
Him: indeed you did....odd...
(silience)

We called it after that because they had been there a while I was asked to come help dps and over all it went well its just some of us didnt know the fight so 3rd phase killed us the first wipe i was in and we just didnt have the heals for the 2nd attempt. And as much as I dislike people imposing "you are stupid this is how it is done" on people its just as nice to shut them up by showing them you might not know what you think you know. There are probably many reasons sv isnt working for me. One is I dont know how to be a SV hunter but even so that wouldn't explain the crap dps numbers. Doesnt matter at much though even with my lack of knowledge of the shots I do have a basic understanding of rotation so it still should have been resonable. Two dual spec is buggy there could be something wrong with it making it not recognize everything I have set up or ranks or something cause I have every skill purchased to level. Three, it might be the nerf to explosive shot hit just as hard as I was expecting it to and thats why it is doing so poorly. Time will tell

Add-ons, Yah I Gotz Some - Part I

Its been an interesting week for me in game and as much as I would love to rant a hole in your eyes about its house drama and I wanna keep this a drama free zone for as long as possible. That said I will probably get a little lax in my posting just for not wanting to think with all the things on my table. Disclaimer fin.

That said this week hasn't been all insanity as I have been working on trying to improve my effectiveness on my hunter in particular. Now I have be come a bit of an add-on junkie of late though I am trying to reel myself in somewhat with my usage of them. But I have managed to come across a handful that make me wonder why the hell I never tried this before.

Now I'm not gonna start with my newer add-ons but rather my first add-ons I would have a hard time functioning without and work my way through:

FloTotemBar & FloAspectBar

Now these lil beauties I been using since a hunter friend pointed them out to me when I merely an infant in the lands of Azeroth. Now FloTotem is not souly a hunter add-on and is designed making for Shammies but the author was kind enough to build it with the ability to display hunter traps. FloAspects does the same thing with hunter aspects. These in combination free up alot of space for action bars and though I am sure there are ways around using them I would personally have a hard time adapting.

X-Perl UnitFrames

I always been a minimalist when it comes to how I have done my job on Edy and so far it worked for me but the last few weeks I have been thinking more about how I can be better. I'd never used unit frames of any sort and I am gonna be honest I tried this one just cause I liked the fact it made character portraits animated, but even with that silly a reason I love this add-on. Makes my life in raids so much easier being able to see the tanks when I am not in group with them for misdirects and helps me keep an eye on healers for when I have to use my Snuggs to OT for a minute if something gets on them or drop a trap till a tank can get to the healer. Pretty easy to set up how you want it as well.

MiKScrollingBattleText

Something I should have had a while go as I didn't even really use Blizzard's built in text for a while. Main reason I suggest this is for cool downs cause its nice to see an ability flash up when it ready rather than watching my action bars. I have enough to keep up with what with my pet running around gnawing his little heart out.

PowerAurasClassic

I got this yesterday after checking a few hunter blogs I follow and I'll be damned if it already isn't the best thing I have picked up since this add-on frenzy thing week. Took me a minute to work out how to use it but now that I know I don't have to worry about missing a Beastial Wrath cd or not knowing I was still in Aspect of the Viper cause the lovely flashies I have set up tell me that faster than I can look at my action bars and in the middle of a fight thats alot of time saved. I have yet to set it up for Ty but I am sure it will have the same effect for her as well and I definately recommend trying it out.

PallyPower

Speaking of Ty, I have only this one add-on to mention for her. Now I think any Paladin worth salt should have this add-on cause it just makes buffing that much easier. Its easy to set up. It registers what buffs other paladins in your group/raid have in theirs so you can adjust accordingly and the timers and alerts for unbuffed players just makes buffing for pallies that much less of a headache. Though thats all killed when you are running with a paladin that doesn't have it but yeah you cant win 'em all now can you?

OmenThreatMeter, Recount & DeadlyBossMods

These are add-ons I will mention just because they are add-ons I feel everybody that wants to PVE should have them. Every player should be fully aware of their own threat at any given time. They should also not be dependant on the raid lead or people in party to alert them when attacks are coming in a fight they need to be aware of. Also, lets just be honest Recount is a blessing and a curse. Though you should be fully aware how much damage you are doing it also leads to bone heads trying to top the charts and as such pulling unnessasary aggro from the tanks and hindering the over all dps of other players fully dps as they need to in order to allow the tanks to get aggro back. Don't be that guy.

I haven't bothered to link add-ons in this cause I have those listed on the side and you can just click em there (yeah I am lazy get over it). I also have many other add-ons I work with but those will come up another day. Untill then happy add-on hunting.

Giggle Like a School Girl and various PTR thoughts.

First off I would like to welcome my partner in crime, the Harley Quinn to my Ivy, Eus to this blogging thing. You can find her here at The Suicidal Healer . I would also like to thank her husband, my guild leader, for his welcome at Holy Shock and yes chief you do put me through my paces but I have fun doing it... most of the time.

Well now that is out of the way I can get down to business. Now I could QQ about the changes coming down the grand 3.1 tunnel. I could complain about the coming removal Spiritual Attunement from trainers and being put deep in the prot pally tree thus returning our mana woes to the lowly retadin. I could moan about this, but I don't really care. Mana has never been a strong point for a ret. We got past it then we will now. I could also bitch about the nerf to Explosive Shot.....no wait....why would I complain about that? I think its needed. A nerf bat swing of a base damage reduction of 10% and attack power scaling of 12.5% might end up being alot but in all honesty I am tired of getting blasted in the back with one shot and it taking half my life. Am I just a bitter Beast Mastery hunter waiting to see another hunter tree feel the nerf wraith? Possibly. I however am not speaking as a jaded hunter right now. I came to terms with my tree's changes and could give you many a reason why I have remained a BM hunter in the face of the SV revolution, but that is a conversation for another time. No my friends there are more than enough blogs dealing with the Ghostcrawler should be strung up arguments. I have other things that make me excited about 3.1. Its not the Dual Spec, though admittedly I am beyond excited about that coming feature. It's not the coming buffs to the pet trees that make my 51 points to get the Beast Mastery talent oh so nice now. Its not even the changes to hunter ammo still being squared away though that does too make me giddy like a kid that just found a piece of candy in his pocket in the middle of class. No, the things that I wish to look at are the little changes that bring joy.

"What little things could those be Edy? How could anything be more important that the never ending news of buffs and nerfs and super buffs and super nerfs for my *insert random class here* ?" To that question I pose another. Do those make you giggle like a school girl? Yes I aware that a buff will make anybody giggle with glee, but I wanna clarify. Which would make you giggle till your face hurts more a slight change to your class that you wont notice once you get it though it looked GREAT on paper, or a lil' mecha gnome that will smash those annoying ass train sets for you and does a little shimmy? Personally the gnome wins hand down, but there could be something wrong with me. New loots make me giddy. New mounts get me hot. New small pets give me hours of running in circles watching them scrurry along side my mount with that new mount smell. Mounts that SWIM blow my mind. A new type of spirit beast makes me all tingly inside. The new Wind-up Train Wrecker makes me giggle like a lil school girl who just pushed a boy in the girls' room. So what my retadin wont be getting mana from being healed much longer. So what my hunter is still working through the bm growing pains and dealing with the ever present presure of trying to compete with the soon to be nerfed just as hard SV tree. There are foam swords to be had, specral tigers in sandbox form (sure they are from the trading cards but its something to shoot for) and even mounts to be fished. It's the little things that keep me going in the crazy ever-changing lands of Azeroth. So when you get the patch blues remember you can always just get a lil' mecha gnome to smash the crap out of that stupid train set pissing you off in your raid and embrace that lil school girl just begging to giggle ab0ut it.

Flex that Ret!

So this past weekend my guild decides to run some BC raid content to get in some practice, get some gear for some lower members, and see how well we raid together as we are trying to move into the end game with more force. So my misadventure begins with Karazhan, which surprisingly we had more people sign up for than we actually had the room for. There was a small problem however. We had no tank. Now we HAD a tank signed up but due to circumstances beyond his control his connection crapped out which left us tank-less. Now many of us are thinking "no way this is gonna happen without a tank" my fearless guild leader (that I am sure was more determined to get his hunter some kara gear than anything else really ;)) suggests myself and one of our dks tank this thing. Now I am thinking oh crud cause
A) I have tanked very little
B) am currently specced ret which I love and
C) I have absolutely NO tank gear
In the end I ended up MTing nearly the whole raid without too much problem as I had 2 lovely 80 healers on my ass, ret holds a lot of aggro when in Righteous Fury, and most of us there knew the run well enough we didn't have too many problems. Now I DID have a few things happened that urked me a bit like certain raid members not listening because they "knew the run". Now I am sorry but I dont give a fart HOW well you think you know the run. You listen to the raid leader and you sure as hell never run ahead of the tank, especially when its somebody that is by no means a true tank and is not used to tanking as is. This led to more deaths than necessary and at least one stressed out healer ready to call it. Though it did stress me out I have to admit I had fun tanking though its not something I wanna make a habit of. Though I have to admit I am starting to look at ret a little differently than I did before.

My guild wasn't done testing my abilities to do things a retadin wasn't exactly designed to do and the next day after a late start to getting the raid together I was informed I would be not only healing but solo healing Zul Aman. HELLO panic mode. I completely lose it when they tell me this. Now I did have a healing off set I had been working on but it was in no way ready for me to heal anything but thank god my pally is a chanter and black smith and I managed to squeeze 1479 sp and 12k mana pool out of my gear. The larger problem for me was the fact I had never healed anything before. What a way to have your healing cherry popped. Over all I think it went ok we made it through some clearing and the eagle boss Akil'zon with just me healing but it became very clear I wasn't gonna be able to keep that up when we got to the bear, Nalorakk. Our tank was just getting hit way to hard for me to keep him up and the rest of the raid as well which about half of the raid was 74 or lower I believe and we were a bit undermaned. Luckily our priest Zoulkhan logs on and comes to save the day....well thats what I wanna say, unfortunatly what really happened was he saved the day on the bear but his connection issues got in the way again. Nothing like the tank rushing into the lynx bastard of a boss Halazzi and me wondering why everybody's health is getting so low he logs back in just as I oom saving the day. One more bout of solo healing on the Hexx Lord after a few wipes and Zou getting knocked cold we get thru Zul'jin with like nil issues. It was hard fought and I was shaking through most of the fights while going into a low buddhist chant of profanities at my situation it was fun. I think I really like healing but I will be damned if I make it habit of doing that while ret spec. It can be done but I wouldnt suggest it personally.

I end up tanking one more time that weekend in Magister's Terrace as a for fun run and it started out with a plan but quickly degraded into a free for all slug fest with the chief and his cat really keeping me on my toes. This time I was more just a retadin just holding aggro than a real tank which is fine with me. I dont really like tanking all that much but I could probably learn to. Healing on the other hand I think I could learn to love. I am trying to hold out for dual spec but with our currernt shortage of healers I might have to speed up my decision to make Tytanya heals or not. I love ret with all my heart and I dont wanna give it up. That said and with these past runs to go by I wouldn't be surprised if I dont get called to test the limits of the retadin again in the tank or healer role. Do I want to? Not really. Would I? Hell yes.