Seems ah’m hangin’ up mah boots fer a while and going back tae Ironforge tae dae some er ’secretarial’ work.  You know, stuff tae dae wi’ documents and ‘filin’ them right’ and stuff. *Ahem*

I blame The Bloggers.  I really do.  It’s all their fault.  All those resto druids and shamans, holy paladins and priests. They’ve changed me.

Chain-Healing
What am I talking about?  About a week or so ago, now, I changed my main to my shaman.  I had been getting tired and bored of stabbing things from behind - I don’t know why as I’ve always loved melee.  A couple of times, however, we were short on healers for Mount Hyjal and I offered my shaman - he’s decently geared with quite a few of the T6 quality badge loot and the pick of Kara epics (still no bloody shield though /bitter) - and was taken along.

Wow.  Just… WOW.  There was a thrill and of  a new sort. A few subs like this and it had gotten to the point where I was actively hoping a healer would drop out just so I could go heal.  When I realised I was doing that I figured it was time to ask for a main change.  It might seem weird so close to Wrath but the guild is currently a little short of healers and heavy on melee dps and here I was with a reasonably geared resto shammy and wanting to chain-heal!

I have to say - it really has put the thrill back in raiding for me.  If you’d told me a year ago I’d actively seek out a healer role I’d have laughed.  If you’d said I’d give up a melee dps spot to do it I’d have laughed doubly hard.  Yet here I am. What has changed? No clue.  I have just found that I really, really enjoy healing and that, in a raid, it engages me far more than roguery does.

Even if most of what I seen in an evening looks something like this:

Hyjal has come alive again for me - every boss fight is not the same old dps cycle, the same old trinket clicking, the same old… old.. *snooze*.  Now I have to pay attention to totems, mana, incoming damage.  Each time I heal the same boss different people take different damage and everything is so new and exciting.  I guess the other thing is that I actually feel like I make a difference.

Doing a fight like Kaz’rogal where you’re staving off mana-reducing deuffs and still having to heal your little heart out is amazingly fun.  Every boss fight feels like a small triumph - more so than whittling away at a ginormous health pool over the course of five to ten minutes.

So, what now?

Of course, that doesn’t change stuff around here.  Aurik is and will remain ‘me’.  He is the personification of my real life self - short, dumpy, scottish, hyperactive and, of course, huggable! *ahem* This has never been a rogue blog nor one which shies from posting about alts so all you might find is that any ‘I went to BT and saw this boss, wow’, posts will be shamany rather than roguey.

Durid is for haelz!

But, that’s not the only healing I’ve been up to…

Yes, the tree is yours truly.  Embracing my new-found enthusiasm for the healy side I grabbed a respec to go heal for the budding young paladin tonk you see here.  I could have healed normal ramparts as feral but I really wanted to try things tree-style with all of the available bells and whistles.  It was a blast but perhaps a bit too easy an instance to judge if I’ve been tempted away from my feral side…  I had to respec the next day to tank some instances but my respec cost at the moment is very low so I might jump the fence a few more times!

I’ve managed to pic up some pretty nice epics just from doing some heroics where noone else wanted them so I’m sitting at around 1k healing already on my druid.  My spirit is a little low, though, as is my mp5 so I’m working on that.  I’ve also not enchanted anything yet - though as I don’t expect to be healing anything difficult I think I’ll see if I can grab some more healy gear whilst tanking before I start grinding out those primal lives.

Oh and I started playing my paladin again a little bit…

a third healer in the making?

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One thing I’ve oft said when referring to my old druid is that I did not like healing with her.  Something about hots etc. just didn’t click for me.

However, I promised myself that I’d do some pvp whilst levelling 60-70 in an effort to have some honor when I hit 70 for my pvp tanking items.  Now, a level 62 druid has little chance of damaging anything in kitty or baer so I figured - hey, I might as well be useful and heal!

Now, of course, I’m used to healing in bg’s with Avarix (my shammy) who has a lot more oomph to his heals but I started to find it oddly satisfying to hop in, throw a few hots into the fray, and hit some big heals before I was inevitably mortal squished by some Tauren warrior.

So - now I’m actually keeping a third set (kitty, baer, resto) as I level.  I’d done this, sorta, on Mharai but it had been a case of making sure I had something for all slots for ‘healing’ in my bank with more heed paid to how it looked than it’s value as healing gear.

A few runs in Slave Pens / Underbog netted my new little druid some tasty feral items along with the utterly awesome looking [Coilfang Hammer of Renewal] and [Tunic of the Nightwatcher] which, along with some crafted gear and quest rewards (for which there was no feral alternative) has brought me up to a whopping ~350 +heal *ahem*.

Now, my first love as a druid will always be feral - I love the challenge of tanking and shredding things kitty-style, but I’ve found a new fondness for the resto side.  I’m really not sure why I’ve suddenly found an ‘understanding’ or any enjoyment with druid healing.

I suspect that because I’ve now had another healer whom I enjoy playing and have had some experience with the ‘flow of damage’ in a fight, that I now find it easier to deal with triksy hots.

For a first time healer, in my opinion, or someone doing druid off-healing, hots are hard to fathom - you need to know how much all of that hot will tick for or have a good idea at least.  Priest, shammy and paladin healing has a much more immediate effect in terms of a persons health boost (I know priests have hots, too, but they tend to be stopgaps from what I’ve seen) and it’s easier, in my opinion, to judge how and when to heal.  As a druid, healing a group seems much more preemptive in nature.

Anywas, I’ll stop rambling now before I make a fool of my little nooblet-druid-healery self and leave it at the fact that I now have an eye on learning a bit about the leafy side of druiding.

I never thought I’d say that…

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The earth has granted my wishes and bestowed upon me a plethora of items which enable me to bring life back to my cohorts. However, it also seems to be bestowing on me an awful lot of things with which to pound the Burning Legion into the ground. The elements work in mysterious ways…

I don’t like to put too many ’srs bsnss’ posts right next to each other so you’re getting gear spam whilst I finish writing up my next long post *ahem*.

First of all the typical problem with hybrids had occurred for me on Avarix. Not only had I kept a pile of stuff ‘just in case’ for my main spec but also for both off-specs! I had been running around with three empty bag slots to my name and nothing I could dump for fear of abandoning something which ‘might be useful later’. So, time for a major clearout! I ended up dissing about a bag (20slot) and a half full of gear - yay for lots of LPS’s / essences / dust.

Kara

A while ago I posted about not really being able to do Kara’s frequently and this making gear a hard decision. Well, it’s no longer so much of a problem! The main issue I had is that I share a pc with my other half - we both have our own laptops but the PC is all that can run Oblivion as well as WoW on max graphics settings. Our newest laptop is pretty decent, though, it just has to have most of the graphics minimised. So, two weeks ago, a Kara group starts up and then another. Two groups can be made if they can find another healer. I warned ‘em I only had the laptop in case of a bit of laggyness but I’m happy to say it went pretty smoothly! So, Kara for me whilst the other half Oblivions! Bwuhahaha.

Phat Kara lewts the past few weeks for me in the last few weeks have been -

Restoration
[Jade Ring of the Everliving], [Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted], [Heart-Flame Leggings], [Cyclone Headdress], and [Cyclone Gloves].

Elemental

[Nathrezim Mindblade], [Shadow-Cloak of Dalaran], and [Boots of the Infernal Coven].

Plus some enhancement stuff. You can tell I’m really enthusiastic about enhancement, can’t you? Maybe once I have a full gear set I can grind some pvp axes and have a go but, for the moment, I love resto way too much!

I’ve also picked up a [Vindicator's Pendant of Salvation] and got enough badges to purchase the [Wave of Life Chestguard] I had my eyes on!

The problem with fast gear-progression? I’ve spent ages on grinding enchanting mats! D’oh! After sending my hunter-auto-grind-bot and his new kitty out to get some primal life, I enchanted everything I could with healing / mp5. I swapped my trinkets around and ended up with:

• 1996 healing
• 157 mp5
• 10.5k mana

  

Not bad - though I wants more mp5!

Healing / Kara Whining Rambling

Last night’s Kara started out with just two healers - first time I’d tried it that way as alt runs often take three. I was getting really worried - people were going down far more often than usual and at one pont the tank got insta-gibbed. “Sorry, guys, wasn’t really paying attention, was on the phone” was not what I wanted to hear from the second healer… I am not well geared or confidant enough yet to even think about Solo-healing Kara and our tank is not over-geared and a Paladin to boot. One of our other shamans (GL) respecced resto and the rest of the night’s healing was a bit of a yawn fest. Bah.

It didn’t help that one dps warrior who had refused to tank (which meant not being able to do two groups that evening) kept pulling before our pally tank or healers had finished drinking. Now, that wasn’t a huge problem for me with my regen slowly getting higher but our pally tank was having a hell of a time generating enough aggro to pull them off said dps warrior and keep them whilst we were spamming heals on the idiot who’d pulled them without a shield. Suffice to say we decided it was better for all if we didn’t heal him next time he did it *ahem*.

It’s odd running with a group you’re not used to - we’re usually a one-shot, blast through, imba group even with mostly alts. Ah well.

Regen

Speaking of regen… I had two sort-of proud moments concerning my mana. Only sort-of because both of them came out of things I’d buggered up. On Prince I died to an infernal landing on my head. I was kinda tired and it was my fault - didn’t move nearly fast enough. However! Self res, pot, water shield, mana spring. Half my mana back and the regen did the rest - I didn’t run oom until he was down. That had happened one week previously and I’d come back and barely been able to scrape my mana back off the floor.

Something had struck me as odd, though. Why was the mana I got back from my pot so low? I have an alchemist stone so using a put is often overkill mana-wise for me unless I’m down to 20-30%. Simple. For some unknown reason I’d managed to switch my trinkets around and was wearing my prayerbook instead of my alchemist stone. So, I’d done the whole evening with no stone - and my regen had still been fine! That was kind of a happy moment for me there. I’m not even past the ‘magic’ 200mp5 yet and had salv buffed instead of wisdom due to some weird bug going on with misdirects / aggro.

Realisations

I’ve come to the odd realisation that my ‘baby’ shammy isn’t a baby any more. He’s all grown up… In fact he’s so grown up he’s been given tier 5 approval and signed for an SSC run next week (for the s-res quest line). Scary. I really hope I can be worthy of a spot - I’ve been reading tactical guides for SSC for shammy healers by Anna as well as refreshing the SSC fights in my mind.

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Upon learning to speak to the wind one must also, apparently, learn to wear the appropriate vestments. There is so much choice, though, and so little of it within my grasp. One must still work to attain that which will increase ones inherent spirituality - though I am still not sure why putting more layers on brings one closer to the elements…

Kara
Over the past few weeks the guild has started running up to two Kara runs - usually a mix of alts and mains for badges and gear. I’m often not often able to go on Wednesdays (or Mondays and Fridays) as I duly give up the computer so the other half can play Oblivion but the past two weeks things have ended up so that I have been available.

Last week the guild needed a healer for the second run or it was a no-go. ‘Sure’ said I, and dashed onto my shaman, respecced (I’d been elemental for Magtheridon, I think) and grabbed all the consumables I could think of. I posted about my phat lewts.
This week I wasn’t expecting to be on but the other half was late home. I figured I’d nip on, patch up and do my transumtes / glass / make pots and flasks for Thursdays raid. I logged on to Aurik. “You are invited to a group by G”. Eh? *DECLINE*.

I hate being ninja invited and never accept unless someone tells me what I’m getting myself into - even from guildies. A few whispers later and I hear that there’s a sort-of competition going on - two groups are getting together and each thinks they can run Kara faster than the other. I was feeling a bit headachey but I didn’t want to say no when there were such high stakes *ahem*. I jumped over to Avarix, joined a team and then proceeded to run around like an idiot, respeccing elemental, grabbing different food buffs and joining TeamSpeak whilst being disconnected from the game a few times (patch issues, I think).

We ran through Kara, finishing in about two and a half hours. Although we were slow in doing the bosses we managed to actually finish before the other team despite starting about 15-20 mins later! Ahaha. Ah well, was all fun and we even managed to 9-man Netherspite when one of our mages had to go offline. Not bad for an almost completely alt character team!

My dps was terrible but I’ll excuse myself this once, hehe. My totem bar, Yata, suddenly stopped working with the patch (no surprises) so I had to relog and configure totemtimers and was still tweaking it until after Moroes!

Totem Timers

As much as my GM and the shammie class-leader recommend totemtimers over Yata I just… don’t like it. I’d tried it before and was willing to give it another shot but I’ll be going back to yata as soon as it’s working (got it working using the pre-update files) - if for nothing else than auto-totemic recall on a right click. I also prefer its timers - which are a lot bigger and include totems other than the four you have in your bar - so I can see when my elemental and mana tide totems come off cooldown - I also like the quickly configuarable and lockable buttons!

Maybe I’m just missing something with totemtimers (or any other totems + timers addon) but… I really don’t see why it’s so much better? I would be happy to be edumacated!

Gear Mathifications

Managed to pick up a few shinies but two pieces of the healing loot I got were really druid pieces ([Forest Wind Shoulderpads] and [Mitts of the Treemender]) - which takes me to three bits of leather armour! It would be four, except that I also grabbed the [Belt of Gale Force] from Moroes!

I have a habit of grabbing any loot noone else wants if it might, possibly, be useful - I hate seeing stuff sharded when the guild bank is full of void crystals - but on second look my [Gauntlets of the Tranquil Waves] from Magister’s Terrace seem to be on par with the druid leather Mitts for me. The higher int and stamina on the mitts is tempting, though… Time to look more closely!

I use Skyhoof’s shaman healing gear thread as a base list but it’s all calculated at t5 level which puts less emphasis on int and a bit more on haste - both represented unequally on these peices of gear. Using the t4 stat weights she gives irecalculated their values:

Mitts:
+25 Stamina - 5
+22 Intellect - 22
+14 Spirit - ignored (as is socket bonus)
+64 Healing - 64
= 91

Gauntlets:
+12 Stamina - 2.4
+10 Intellect - 10
+1 mp5 (socket bonus) - 3.4
+55 Healing - 55
+24 Haste - 16.32
= 87.12

As I suspected, for my level the mitts come out as higher base but there’s not much in it. However! Each still has two gem slots.

1. (+2 x Living Ruby - 36)
2. (+2 x Royal Nightseye - 27.6)
3. (+1 x Royal Nighseye and 1x Luminous Topaz - 26.8)

Mitts with 1. = 127, 2. = 118.6, 3. = 117.8
Gauntlets with 1. = 123.12, 2. = 114.72, 3. 110.52 (would lose the socket bonus)

The reason I’m calculating the last set of gems? I have myself an [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond] which needs to be activated and it requires two yellow gems (I have another in my bracers). The value of an ISD is around 63 (at conservative estimates of it’s worth being 15mp5) So - adding the 63 to both mitts and gauntlets assuming taking the Nightseye and Topaz combination they come out as, rounded down:

Mitts: 180
Gauntlets: 173

The Magister’s Terrace loot is really nice but the stats on them are preferable for higher level content. My main gripe at the moment is lack of mp5 / mana so I think I’ll be enchanting then wearing those leather mitts and banking the gauntlets until I have higher mana regen and a bigger mana pool. Druid-shaman hybrid ftw! *ahem*

Rogue gear is so much simpler…

I was also lucky enough, though, to grab my t4 helm (hence the new meta-gem)! My alt now officially has better headgear than my main… /cry as well as some nice off-spec gear - [The Lightning Capacitor] (passed to me by a very kind warlock whose main is a shaman and insisted that I take it as he could get far better - Thank you A!) - and something for enhance-spec… though I can’t for the life of me remember what it was. I’m so enthusiastic about enhancement… *cough*.

Badge Loot Decisions

The actual point of this post, when I started it, was to look at the fact that I now have lots of badges - more than I ever expected to get on Avarix - and to figure out what I could get with them. Last week I had figured that would be my last Kara for a while and was leaning towards picking up an [Essence of the Martyr] but now I have 73 badges. That puts me an awful lot closer to some really nice, shiny stuff.

But, once again, I’m torn… I could do the badge-giving dailies for the next few days and hope for some badges, get 75 and grab myself some [Natural Life Leggings] or wait and get the [Wave of Life Chestguard] / [Runed Scales of Antiquity]. If Avarix were my main it would be a no-brainer - wait for the big ‘uns - but I cannot be guaranteed badges on my shammie. The last two weeks have been fun but I might not be in Kara for a while now. The other thing which bugs me is that a new chest would be a bigger upgrade, too, but there isn’t a 75 badge chest /cry.

I could, of course, also go for the boots, gloves or belt badge upgrades but I don’t really need those at the moment. I think I’ll maybe try a bit harder to grab myself one more Kara run if possible and then a heroic or so - that chest piece would be the biggest upgrade to my current gear and, unless they added more badge gear, would not be upgraded before WotLK.

Once again a post has spiraled out of control into something way bigger than it was meant to be, whoops.

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A good rogue has to know where to look fer his information. Without information y’might as well stand oot in the broad daylight, twiddlin’ yer thumbs and hopin’ the job will do itself!

Puttin’ these all in one place so that, maybe, someone won’t have to look as far and wide for the links. There are, of course, plenty I’ve ‘missed’ but these are the ones I use on a regular basis for reference, not every single useful link ever.

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