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.

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.