January 8, 2009

Add-on Changes
So, I spent the day reading up on recommended alternate add-ons for healing. I remembered from reading posts on ElitistsJerks that Grid/Clique was their recommendation. I read about PitBull and several other add-ons. But in the end I decided two factors were important to me.

• Not too many changes at once.
• Go with something for which there was a written guide.

So, I went with Grid/Clique. And, I love them!

With Grid I can actually see the names of the toons in the raid, which was one of my biggest problems with Healbot the night before. It is also much more customizable than Healbot, which is great. It even has an option to group by class, which was a big improvement for me. The tanks were pallies and warriors. Having them grouped by their respective classes made it so much easier to find and target them. Additionally, as you'll see later, it also helped me see DPS classes together. Bravo!

And Clique, well, the fact that it works within your Spellbook (read: no typing required), is the biggest selling point for me. It's so easy to use! The only problem I had was that initially I lost the ability to right click on my portrait. At the end of the raid I couldn't figure out how to leave the party because every time I tried to right click on my portrait, I'd start casting Greater Heal. I spent a while looking for a / command for leaving party. But, when I found a post on the WoW forums from someone who had the same issue, I realized it went beyond just leaving a party. It was everything else in that right-click menu, (e.g., Inspect, Trade, Whisper, etc.).

At that point I was so glad I stuck to goal #1 - Not too many changes at once. If I had loaded several new addons, I would have had no idea which one caused this issue. But, since I had kept it simple, it was easy to find. The setting was in the Frames option of Clique.

At this point, the only thing I don't have that I had with Healbot is the ability to track buffs like Inner Fire and Prayer of Fortitude. I downloaded a Grid add-on for doing just that, but it doesn't seem to work. So, for the time being, I still have Healbot running just for that functionality.

Guild
Another quiet night for my guild. Although I love raiding, I hope guild #2 doesn't ask me back to Naxx tonight. I hope they wait for later in the weekend, or Monday night. That way I can spend time with my guildies tonight. I know, I could just say "no" to their invite, but I also don't want to give up the opportunity to see Naxx content and get the gear. I'm already saved to Naxx, so I need to accept their invites when they come. Also, if I start saying "no", they might dismiss me and move on to another healer.

Guild #2
Speaking of that other guild. I was a little annoyed last night. Before I agreed to go back to OS with Guild #3, I wanted to first make sure that guild #2's tentative Thursday night Naxx plans were on or off. I sent a whisper to the guild leader asking him that. And, even though his toon was never AFK and he was moving from zone to zone, he never responded. Now, giving him the benefit of the doubt, I am also guilty of missing tells/gchats/pchats when there's so much going on. So, I totally understand that he could have missed my whisper. But, since we had tentative plans to return to Naxx, you'd think he would have at least sent me a whisper at some point to tell me whether or not we were still on. After waiting 15 minutes, I agreed to go to the OS25 run. (Side note: Guild #2 never went to Naxx last night. So, at least they didn't go without me.)

Obsidian Sanctum (Heroic)
We did it! 25 people coordinated their efforts and brought down that lava-wall-calling dragon! There were several new DPSers in the raid. And right before we started someone pointed out that the DPS was much stronger than the night before. It might have been true, because the kill went relatively smoothly. We did wipe the first time, but we chalked that up to so many people being there for the first time. But, on the second attempt we won.

Personally, I think my performance was improved over the night before for several reasons.

1. I had watched the video during the day and saw that the best positioning was to stay back in the path of the left side gap, only moving up when necessary for the right side wall. I was able to heal without a problem from that position and I minimized my movement as a result.
2. Grid/Clique made it easier to actually see who was who and, more importantly, to see the heals that others had on them. I wasted less heals because of this.
3. I focused more on actual raid healing and left the tanks to the tank healers. #2 above helped me do this, but I also had to remind myself that the DPS and healers were relying on me to heal them. If I let them die because I was focusing on the tanks, I wasn't doing my job. Also, less DPS would have meant more chances of failure. Although several people did die, I think I did a good job of keeping most up.
4. I stopped casting whenever a lava wall came up. It was more important for me to stay alive than it was for me to get one extra heal in. I can proudly say I didn't get hit by a single wall.
   
5. I wasn't as tired as the night before.

I got a shiny new trinket. It looked to me like a DPS trinket and I almost didn't roll on it, but then I saw the other holy priest in the raid roll. So, at the last second I rolled...and bam!...the trinket was mine. I feel kinda guilty, as a DPSer could have really benefited from it. But, I can see how it's going to benefit me tremendously. Since it raises my spellpower by 26 on every cast, I can technically have it increased by 260 for much of the time. This is amazing. I'm thinking this means I can swap out some of my +Spellpower gems for some +Spirit gems again. I'll have to play around with it a bit to see. Thank goodness I'm a miner and a jewelcrafter. It's so easy for me to make gems and swap them out without spending money.

Note: I just read the notes for the upcoming patch. This item is going to be changed to proc for 20 SP (down from 26) on each spell cast. So, I'll be raising my SP by 200 for much of the time. Still awesome. And...after reading the comments on Wowhead, I'm feeling much less guilty. General consensus is that this item is just as useful for healers as it is for DPS. So, I had as much right to roll on it as the others. Phew! :)

Nexus (Heroic)
After OS, I got an invite to an Heoric Nexus run. Another chance to get my mace! It was an awesome group, so unlike the group the night before. The only deaths came when we were surprised by a pat. Otherwise, it was 100% smooth and efficient. And....my mace dropped! But someone else won the roll. :( Oh well, at least now I can say I actually saw it drop. hehe

One funny thing that happened was that when the druid ressed each of us after that surprise wipe, two of us ended up resurrecting in Westfall. I'd heard of that happening before, but that's the first time I saw it in action. While in Westfall, the tank complimented me on my healing skills and invited me to join his raiding guild. I said I'd think about it (though I will not leave my guild, I'm dead set on that). I checked on warcrafter.net and saw that his guild is ranked 30th (equipment-wise) on the server. Not a bad one to get invited to. :)

One observation: Boomkins & Pallies provide amazing buffs for me. I want them in every one of my parties!