January 7, 2009

Nexus (Heroic)
Even though I really didn't have time (was expecting to go to Naxx), I accepted an invite to join an Heroic Nexus PuG. I was told they were on the third boss, so it was 10 minutes, tops. Of course, I completely forgot that there's an additional boss in Heroic Nexus, so in reality they had 2 mini-bosses left and then the final one.

I joined and within 5 minutes I knew I had made a mistake. Something was really off. After the first wipe on Anomalus, I had to give a quick speech about letting the tank get aggro before DPS attacks. The hunter got defensive saying he got attacked by the boss right away and I didn't send him heals. I explained that the only reason the boss attacked him was that he hadn't given the tank enough time to establish aggro. And, since it was clear he was going to die quickly, any heals I sent his way would have been aggro magnets for me as soon as he was down.

We wiped 2 times on him before we got him down. But, I died at the last second. As I was running back, they looted his corpse and ran off to the next area. I still had to get my Emblem of Heroism so I ran back to loot the boss. (I was NOT going to walk away from the run with nothing!). They were so clueless about their surroundings that they walked right into a group, engaged it, then started screaming for heals and asking where the "damned healer" was.

I rezzed them then apologized, saying that my 10 minutes were up and it was time to go to Naxx. This time I was not feeling guilty at all for abandoning a group.

I'm not an elitist jerk by any means. But, the way these people played, they were clearly not experienced enough for heroic dungeons. I can only hope that the advice I gave them after each wipe will sink in and they will improve.

My First 25-Man -- Obsidian Sanctum!
I was waiting for word on whether or not I'd be going to Naxx with guild #2 when I got an invite to a 25-man Obsidian Sanctum run. I confirmed with guild #2 that they were not going to Naxx, then accepted the OS invitation with guild #3. What a fun experience!

The run itself was not at all like I've experienced in the 10-man version. Not because the encounters are different -- because they're not. But, because we wiped at least 6 times on the final boss and still didn't get it down. I don't think I've ever wiped in Obsidian Sanctum 10-man. How difficult is it to run to the gap in the lava wave? Apparently very difficult -- even for me. I was so mortified by my own inability to move to the right spot fast enough. In order to save face, I ended up using Guardian Spirit on myself so I wouldn't die from the lava damage. If I died one more time from it, I was sure they were going to call me out. Because they were making it clear that they were getting tired of the idiots who couldn't get to the gaps. Luckily for me, I was not the only one, but still. Considering I've done it a couple other times with no problem, I was surprised that I just couldn't manage it last night.

Now...not to make excuses, but I do think there are factors that contributed to my not being able to get out of the lava waves.

• The tank positioned the boss in a different location than what I'm used to. In my previous runs, the boss was positioned at the far end of the space, turned left. This tank insisted on pulling the dragon a little further down so that his belly was located at the gap in the lava wave. This made it necessary for us to run to the dragon's belly for every wave coming from the right side. It was very disconcerting to run right up to the dragon and stand beneath it. I have to admit each time I did that I was not 100% focused on the gap. I was distracted by the huge dragon towering above me.
• This was my first 25-man run. I know that might sound like a lame excuse. But, the truth is, it was a lot to take in for a first time. It was chaos everywhere. I rarely even noticed when I myself was taking damage, which is unlike me. There were times that the warning regarding the lava wave came up and it got lost on me because there was too much going on.
  
• Raid Healing vs. Tank Healing. I was assigned to raid healing. That experience is very different in a 25-man than in a 10-man. Or at least it was last night. In a 10-man, "raid healing" really just means focusing on 7 other people. (Excluding the 2 main tanks and me.) I find it pretty manageable. I'm able to keep DPS alive while throwing a PoM on the tanks on every cooldown. Occasionally, I have to help keep up the main tanks. But, still, that's manageable. In the 25-man last night, my healing focus was all over the board. There were just so many more people to take care of. And they were all taking damage! As with the point above, there was just so much to focus on I found it difficult to pay attention to the lava flows.
  
• Healbot's interface is not good for 25-man raids. I had always planned on downloading Grid/Clique before venturing into 25-mans. But this invitation came out of the blue so I did what I could to adjust Healbot to show all 25 players and 3 pets. My biggest problems were that I couldn't see the names of the people on the boxes and that, in some cases, I just couldn't see that they were losing health. Don't get me wrong, Healbot was accurately displaying loss of health. But, I couldn't see it because the bar was blending in with the background. This meant that I was spending more energy than normal trying to make sense of what Healbot was showing me, and not enough energy paying attention to my surroundings.

Those are the things that made it difficult for me directly. I realize the other players are factors too, so here are a few thoughts as to possible ways they contributed to our lack of success.

• Not enough healing. As I mentioned above, in my 10-man experience I'm able to raid heal quite effectively. Last night I found myself helping out on the main tanks quite a bit. This meant that the DPS didn't get as much of my attention as they deserved. Was that my fault for not actually focusing on my assignment? Should I have trusted the tank healers to do their jobs without my help? Or were they actually unable to keep up with the damage and my help was absolutely necessary? Were they undergeared?
• Not enough DPS. On the final attempt we actually did quite well with respect to the lava flows. No one (not even me!) got caught in one. Since that is the main trick to the encounter, failure had to be for other reasons. Perhaps the DPS just weren't putting out enough damage for the encounter. Several times in vent I heard people saying, "Kill the adds faster. Come on guys, not fast enough."
  
• The tank couldn't keep aggro. Almost every time we did it, the dragon turned/moved and attacked others at least one time during the encounter. I heard people yelling in vent for tanks to stop taunting the dragon. It sounded to me like the tanks were making several mistakes. (At this point I'll note that I don't think I ever want to tank. It seems too complicated and requires coordination that I don't (yet?) have. Playing wack-a-mole with a healing interface is much easier than switching focus between several mobs, and constantly paying attention to what each mob is doing.) In my 10-man experiences the dragon stayed put...always on the tank and never changing focus. Was the tank not doing his job well enough? Were the other tanks taunting the dragon away? Was the DPS too high, taking away aggro (though I don't think that could have been the case)?

Mistakes were made... I'm going to try to learn from them. I would like to go back to 25-man raids. Now I know what aspects I find difficult and I can work on improving my ability to deal with them. In the end I'm not sure if the group was just not ready for that encounter or if much of it was my fault. But, the silver lining is that the experience was challenging enough to make me understand the areas in which I need to improve. I prefer this over starting with an excellent group that would have made up for my mistakes in their own efficiency...giving me a false impression that 25-mans are easy.

Guild
Again, nothing. But, then again, I spent the entire time with other people.

Personal
Se murió el ratoncito. Lo ví en el suelo esta mañana. Pobrecito.

January 6, 2009

Last night I had very little time to play. Didn't even get to finish all my dailies. /gasp

Gundrak (Heroic)
As soon as I logged in I was asked to heal for a Heroic Gundrak. After three failed attempts to get the first boss down, I gracefully bowed out. I've been trying to stick to my self-made rule of "3 wipes and I'm outta there." Of course, there are some situations, like in Raids, where that doesn't apply. But, in PuG 5-mans that I know I can do with a good group, I'm not wasting my time. I did feel bad leaving, but I think it was for everyone's good.

Obsidian Sanctum
I went back to OS with the other guild. We tried to do it with one drake up, but failed miserably. So, we took that drake down and finished the instance with no problems. Something to work towards. I got my Tier 7 Gloves. I'm still unsure whether they're actually better than the gloves I had on. I'll see how it goes.

Naxxramas
We returned to Naxx. Patchwerk went down easily. Yay! We then moved on to Grobbulus. I hate to sound like a teenager, but Epic Fail! We had a guy in the group that explained the fight to us. We tried 4 times, but still couldn't get it. We did get him closer to death each time, but we definitely need to figure out how to better position the gas clouds. (I watched a video of it online today and saw a couple things we could do to improve.)

Vault of Archavon
We went to Vault of Archavon after giving up on Grobbulus. Easy 10 minute raid.

Guild
Nothing to report on the guild front. I felt kinda bad raiding with another guild tonight. But there weren't enough people on in my guild to pull together an instance. So, it's probably nothing to worry about.

General Observations
So, one of the interesting tidbits from last night was that one of the players in the other guild talked about being gay. Of course, it wasn't news to his guildmates, but it was news to me. I thought it was awesome to hear the banter between these guys. They obviously have known each other a long time, so they know each other pretty well. As far as I can tell, the other guys are straight. So, it was wonderful to see them interacting with no prejudice at all. Hoorah for them! In a game filled with teenage boys proving their "manhood" by killing one another, having better equipment, etc., it was refreshing to see this. I feel I'm lucky to have found them.

January 5, 2009

Nexus (Heroic)
No mace drop...AGAIN!

Naxxramas
We returned to Naxx last night and did Patchwerk. And, even though the OT died at the last second, we still got him down. What I loved was that instead of asking me and the other healers why we couldn't keep him alive, they went right for the DPS. Though I think that's because the fight lasted longer than it was supposed to. So, it would make sense that it's the fault of low DPS. But, no worries. I got a cloak out of it.

Obsidian Sanctum
After Patchwerk, we ran over to finish someone's earlier saved Obsidian Sanctum. All we had to do was clear the re-spawned trash and then hit Sartharion himself. Piece of cake. I love running back and forth to the gaps in the lava.

The Other Guild
Well...it looks like I performed well enough over the past week to secure an ongoing relationship with that other guild. I have no desire to leave my guild, so I'm hoping I can stay a "free agent" with the other one for a while. I know most guilds prefer gearing up people within their own guild. But, I'll not act like a loot hog and I'll do my best to show up when they need me. So far their loot distribution is entirely fair.

Guild
Nothing to report on the guild front. We did one instance yesterday. It went well. Most of my time was spent in Naxx and OS, so there wasn't much opportunity to interact.

New Year's Weekend

Bringing in the New Year
We spent New Year's Eve at the in-laws' new house in the country. It was insanely cold that night. We had a low key celebration by breaking in their fire place and playing with the baby. A nice way to bring in the New Year.

Then back home and more WoW.

Dailies
I finally figured out how to open up the Oracles dailies. So, now I'm working on getting to Exalted with them so I can get that egg. It's going to take a while, as I'm only 1/2 way to Revered at this point.

Still no mount on the Hyldnir dailies.

Reached revered with Sons of Hodir, so I now have a Mammoth mount. It's huge and doesn't fit through doorways, but it's still a lot of fun to ride. :-)

Achievements
I got a few achievements this weekend. The mammoth mount was one. The others were all instance related. At some point I'll go back to the old world instances and get those, but I'm too motivated by rep and emblems of heroism right now to leave Northrend.

Raids
Tried each night to go back to Naxx, but could never get a full group. Hopefully we'll do better this next week.

Guild
Lots of guild runs this weekend. Holiday weekends are good for that. I'm glad my guildmates are finally reaching high levels so I can run with them. As much as I enjoy PuGing (yes, I really do enjoy PuGs), I prefer going with my friends.

Speaking of my friends, I need to vent about something. We had the usual loot problems this weekend. Not the problems that other guilds have, but those that seem to be unique to my guild. Several of my guildmates are passive aggressive martyrs. Instead of following standard loot rules of "Need on items you need, pass if you don't (or Greed, if we don't have an enchanter in the group)", they greed on items they actually need. This is especially problematic when we have an enchanter in the group because he is always greeding for DE purposes. What this means is that the passive aggressive martyrs often miss out on loot that they could definitely use. The enchanter gets it and he DEs it. What a friggin waste.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for DEing the items that aren't upgrades for anyone. What annoys me about all this is the behavior of those who are greeding instead of needing. They then later complain about not finding any good gear and finding the content difficult. Grrr... I have to take a deep breath and let them play how they want to play, to not let it bother me. But, I honestly worry about what's going to happen when we hit heroics. They're going to be undergeared and they're going to not be aggressive about getting the drops that they should rightfully get, further gimping our progression.

It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game. It's just a game.

Honestly, there's a part of me that is sad about the rest of the guild reaching 80. In many ways, PuGs are easier than guild runs because of the loot antics and other things. Had we all leveled at the same rate, I can guarantee I wouldn't be as geared as I am now. Because they would be holding me back. I was lucky to hit 80 first and to be able to PuG with some great players with great equipment. I feel like a hypocrite when I say that. I truly do love my guildmates. So I'm torn between my desire to progress and my desire to hang out with them. I have to find a healthy balance for myself.

I rank!
I just found a new site today called Warcrafter.net. For each server it lists the guild ranking and invidual player rankings. I filtered my server by priests and I see that I rank 45th of all the priests. I'm pretty proud of that! :)

December 30, 2008

Heroic Nexus, Vault of Archavon & Naxx!

Nexus
Last night was a big one for me. After a very good Heroic Nexus PUG run, I was invited to my first Naxx run.

I had reservations about going -- my stupid insecurities about my playing ability. Yeah, yeah, I know, even after countless times being told "great heals", "you're an awesome healer", etc, I still feel inadequate. In TBC I stepped into Kara with my Hunter a few times then at the end I healed with my priest once. The healing went horribly, though to this day I'm not sure if it was because of my lack of skill/gear or the combination of everyone's lack of gear. So, my experience so far with raiding has been fun, but emotionally stressful. (Note: I did go on an Obsidian Sanctum run a few weeks ago and found it extremely easy. So, technically, that was my first raid in Wrath.)

But, I overcame my fears and decided to give it a shot. I am sooo glad I did. It was a great experience.

First stop -- finding the darned place. Who knew it was up in the air and you had to enter from underneath? LOL.

Vault of Archavon
Second stop - change of plans. Alliance just gained control of Wintergrasp, so we were off to kill the raid boss there, Archavon. When the decision was being made whether or not to go to Wintergrasp I almost took the opportunity to wimp out. I was sure there was going to be tons of PVP (which I hate!), so that was going to be enough ruin my evening. But, I clenched my jaw and decided to roll with it. What the heck? I was in a group of 10 people, surely they were going to protect the squishy priestess?

Well, to my pleasant surprise, I found out that there was no PVP involved. Just get to Wintergrasp, enter the portal, enter the instance, kill a few trash mobs, then kill the boss. It was a great warmup for Naxx. I was reminded of how well I can heal and how easy it is for me to catch on to strategies. So...I have to wonder, why do I always doubt my abilities? Though, I do have to say that healing is probably easier, strategy-wise, than tanking or DPSing. We heal damage. What is actually going on in a fight is of concern to us, of course, but we're less focused on how and what is being attacked than the rest of the players.

The drop: Cloth! But, Warlock only. Darn!

Naxxramas
Final stop - Naxxramas! The sounds, the music, the visuals. Extremely beautiful. And the encounters were tons of fun. I was put on raid healing, and I'm proud to say that in the whole night there were only a few deaths. I wasn't complimented on my healing, but I was asked to come back to finish it later this week. So, I guess I did well enough. :)

We cleared the Arachnid Quarter and the Plague Quarter up to Noth the Plaguebringer. I found all the encounters easy except the Noth one. And that one wasn't difficult really, just a pain in the rear to heal all the AoE damage. So, either everyone else was overgeared, or I'm an adequate to good healer. :-)

I can't wait to go back. I'm so glad to have gotten over this fear of Naxx.

As for loot, no other cloth items dropped for the rest of the night. But, no complaints from me. I saw exciting new content, made a bunch of new friends, and got a few emblems of honor. An excellent night, I would say!

Oh...and my stupid mace didn't drop in Nexus again! Why? Why? Why?