My new friend Foreluney wants me to write about him.  This is sort of challenging since I’ve known him for all of 3 days.  But I like the guy, and I like challenges, so… what to say about Foreluney?   There’s something about the way that we met that seems important to me, so let’s talk about that.

I knew OF Foreluney for a month or two before I knew Foreluney.  I think the first time I became aware of him was when I was helping out with guild recruitment for my guild and ran across this post on the Khadgar forum, which asked people to list who they thought was the best alliance player on the realm for each class.  More than one person tossed out Foreluney’s name as the best alliance resto druid on Khadgar, a topic which piqued my interest.  Apparently, I filed his name away in my head, because a week or so later I took a look at WOW-heroes and ran across this:

I immediately remembered having seen Foreluney mentioned as “da best” on the Khadgar forum thread, and registered in my head that he was certainly the best geared of us.  /nod nod.

And so, as will happen with me from time to time, I began to develop a touch of reverence for Foreluney, whoever he may be.  Mind you, I had no idea what kind of person he was, had never seen him play, did not remember ever seeing him chatting in trade, etc.  The only things I knew about him were that he was very geared, was in the most progressed alliance guild on my server, and that many people agreed that he was a very good restoration druid.  But still… these things are enough to impress me on some level, although I’m squirming a bit when it comes down to admitting it.

See… I’ve never been much good at video games.  That makes me laugh to write it, but it’s true.  I’ve always been interested in them to some degree, and I’ve always liked to play them, but I’m not the type who picks up the controller and instinctually maneuvers through games like they are an extension of myself.  Most games I’ve played, unless they were pretty basic, I’ve either not been able to finish, or have remained a pretty average player despite hours of practice.  I’m ok with this, generally speaking.  I leave the XBox to the good players in my house, like my husband and my 4 year old daughter.  Never touch the thing.  But I’ve always had this sort of envious awe of the people who can just step into games and master them.

Now, I would argue, albeit humbly, that for the most part I have risen above my innate luddite tendencies when it comes to World of Warcraft.  I may not set the world on fire, but I can hold my own as a raid healer.  I’ve helped my guild to defeat a lot of content, including some hard modes (although we’re not at ICC hard modes yet), and I do a pretty good job most of the time.  But I’m much stronger after I’m comfortable in an encounter, and will never be a cutting edge raider in progressive content.  I do ok, but I’m usually flustered to some extent and not at the top of my healing game until I’ve worked through the encounter several times.   And so for those players who excel at progression, who are at the top of the raiding game, I still feel that twinge of impressed respect.  And that feeling pretty much sums up how I felt about Foreluney when we met. (Why do I get the feeling he’s going to tease me about this mercilessly?)

I also should add here that I’ve only been on my server for nine months, so I’m still learning about the communities there.  And Foreluney’s guild has something of a harsh reputation from what I’ve picked up.  What I’ve heard about them is that they are “hard core” raiders with a punishing raid schedule and rather large egos.  This image of them, which may or may not be true, has been reinforced for me on a couple of occassions when I have pugged with members of the guild who have been merciless in vent to people who made mistakes or were not the strongest of players.  Now, I get as frustrated as the next person by outright stupidity, but I tend to be pretty forgiving of ignorance and never like to hear people being called out in a cruel or callous manner, which is one of the many reasons I truly love my current guild.  We will do everything we can to help people raise up their raiding game, and we will try to handle it behind the scenes without embarrassing anyone.  Does our tolerance hold us back from server first epic awesomeness?  Of course it does.  But we are sympatico, we are peaceful, we are family.  So, in addition to having this touch of awe in regard to all things Foretluney, I also had an idea that he might, in fact, be a total dick.  lol…

Anyway!  I finally got my hunter, Harmonie, geared enough that she wouldn’t be insta-kicked from an ICC pug, and joined one this week to get her a bit more geared up and experienced.  We had 9 people and were short a healer, when someone said that they knew a resto shammy who had healed up through hard modes on his druid and could come.  The shaman’s name was Forey.  “Hmm…” says I, “Forey… Foreluney?  Could it be the same person?”  So I asked in raid chat if this was, indeed, Foreluney, and my guess was confirmed.  Forey/Foreluney joined the raid.

And I had a conundrum.  Did I want to out myself as a semi- fan girl and meet this person, or did I want to melt from their memory as soon as the raid ended (if, indeed, I ever registered on his consciousness as more than a health bar?  I think the fact that I have actually made a couple acquaintances in his guild that were actually fun to talk to tipped the scales.  Don’t get me wrong here… I didn’t agonize over whether to introduce myself or consciously weigh out any of what I’ve written here.  But the idea of whispering came to me, and in a second or two I decided that of course I wanted to say hello.  I adore making Resto Druid friends to chat with, and this was a person that, should he respond positively to my whisper, might be able to teach me more about the game and the class that I love. 

So, I whispered to him that my main was a resto druid and that I had heard of his druid on the forums.  He responded very warmly to me and we chatted back and forth all the way through the raid.  I put him on my friends list, he put me on his, and we’ve chatted a couple of times since.  I find him to be warm, friendly, charming, and very funny.  And so there it is.  I have a new friend. 

Is he the best resto druid on the server?  I don’t know.  I suppose that the answer to that question depends very much on how you, personally, define “the best.”  But he strikes me as being very down to earth, which I did not expect.  I like him.  I’m convinced he must put his pants on one leg at a time.  We have chatted a bit about our class, and I look forward to many more discussions on the topic. And any friend who makes me laugh as much as he has in 3 days is a good friend to have, no doubt about it.  It has been a good lesson for me about making assumptions, and a good reward to me for reaching out and hoping for the best.  Not the best player, the best possible result for taking a chance on someone as a person and being rewarded with something worthwhile and good.

Patch 3.3 hit the PTR today!  I’m pretty stoked about this development, as I’m sure many of you are.  I’ve been downloading the patch for the last hour or so, and it’s nearing completion.  I will probably take a premade character for a spin on the PTR this time around as a) I’ve never done that before, and b) I’m just getting started on T9 gear on Sylly, so I’d really like to have a fully geared toon to try out Icecrown.  But maybe I’ll bring Sylly over too, let her have a look around.  Wouldn’t want her to get jealous now, would we?  As things are just getting rolling for this patch, I’m sure there is much more information to come, but the web was aflurry with news today.  In everything I saw, there was quite a bit to be excited and happy about, despite the bop of a nerf bat on our Rejuvenation. 

So let’s just take a quick look at the bad news first, lest the post end on a down note which wouldn’t match my mood about this patch business at all.  Rejuvenation at max level is losing a tic, returning it to a 12 second spell from a 15 second spell (15 down from 18 if talented into Nature’s Splendor).  Will this hurt us?  Well, sure.  It will.  Some.  When we’re all out healing AOE madness balls to the wall and throwing up Rejuv on every breathing raidmate within our casting radius, we’ll come up 3 raid members short before we have to start throwing them up again (assuming a 1 second global cooldown).  If we’re not healing everyone, we’ll still have 3 seconds less to be doing other things in between our Rejuvenations.  The spell will get a 20% nerf, assuming that every tic was actually doing healing and that final tic wasn’t going to be overhealed.  So, yes.  It hurts.  But, in the end, I’m not overly concerned about this change at this point.  Is there anyone out there who’s going to disagree that Rejuvenation had gotten a little big for its britches?  The best Druids in my guild stand far and away above the other healing classes in terms of total healing in the vast majority of Ulduar encounters, and the majority of TOC as well.  In addition, we have no idea what the boss fights in Icecrown are going to look like.  It’s quite possible that laying down a thick blanket of Rejuve over the entire raid is going to be pointless there, as it’s had less application in TOC than in Ulduar.  I’ll wait and see before I cry foul.  Also, the devs watch the PTRs closely.  We’ve seen nerfs melt away there before patches go live in the past.  If the nerf is too strong, there’s a good chance they’ll adjust accordingly.  So… easy goes it out there.  Let’s just keep ourselves rooted and see what happens with this.

In terms of what there is to be excited for, topping my list with a bullet is Icecrown!  Woohoo!  I am so excited about this upcoming raid that I’m practically doing a happy dance in my chair.  I never made it through TK or Sunwell in B.C.  There just wasn’t enough time.  I never bought the game until halfway through that expansion, so by the time I really hit my stride raiding and was in a guild that was starting on T6, WOLK was released and we were all hell bent for level 80.  Because of this, I never got to experience the full raiding progression to end game.  Not in the pre B.C. level 60 raiding, and not in B.C.  I had no idea how exciting it was to have the true end game set in my sights.  After witnessing Arthas whining and bitching all over the damn place these many months (could there BE a bigger drama queen?!?), I am looking forward gleefully to breaking out the whoopass and smacking QQ Boy down!  Woohoo!

Apart from these delusions of grandeur on my part, I’m also really energized about the upcoming raid just because of the somewhat anticlimactic experience of TOC.  One of the things I always really savored about raiding is seeing the amazing artwork and environments of the raiding instances.  I remember being blown away by Kara when I first went there.  What a magnificent stage Blizzard set there for adventurers!  And traveling through Ulduar is just a sensory buffet of wonder for me.  TOC?  Hell, the whole raid (save the final encounter) takes place in the same single room as an entire 5 man instance.  It’s not a long raid, it’s not a challenging raid, it’s not an interesting raid.  I’m so looking forward to having that “holy shit!” experience that I have had in other raid instances once again, having to battle through unfolding terain and gaining a sense of forward momentum toward ever more challenging bosses. 

Another innovation that I am anticipating is Blizzard’s introduction of daily (weekly?) raid quests for Emblems of Frost, the newest tier of emblem to be released with 3.3.  The quests range through WOLK raiding content, which will provide many guilds with additional incentive to run old content and allow people to gear up new raiding toons or alts in a way that is otherwise more difficult to arrange.  It will allow people just entering that content to gear up more easily and make them more quickly viable to raid at the higher tiers of content.  I know there are those out there who think that moves like this on Blizzard’s part are dumbing the game down, taking away the relevance of earning a certain level of gear or accomplishment.  I disagree.  The harder it is to progress, the more guilds are limited in choices in terms of members, the more likely it is for people to quit playing the game because they feel blocked out from the best the game has to offer, the less viable the game becomes as an ongoing enterprise.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that anyone who gets gear by the easiest imaginable route will be a viable raider.  But good guilds have vetting processes, application periods, ways of weeding out the players who don’t make the grade.  But just because someone came late to the ball game for some reason doesn’t mean they won’t be a talented player.  Hopefully this new system of raid related dailies will present more opportunities for a wide variety of players to experience more content and earn gear that will open up more of the game, and will bring more talented players into the raiding pool.

So, Icecrown?  Bring it, Baby!  Someone go run out and tell Arthas he is NOT prepared… mwahahahaha!!!!

I’ve been doing some thinking about how to make a bazillion dollars and never have to work or worry again.  Sometimes I do that.  Generally I’m in charge of inventions, while my husband is ostensibly the research and development/marketing guy, but between you and me and the wall… he doesn’t live up to his full potential in these areas.  That’s why I’m bringing my latest brain child to you all for feedback. 

I have developed a board game designed to simulate the Wrath of the Lich King raiding experience as closely as possible.  I believe that this game will serve multiple audiences, from WOW players wanting to get a feel for what raiding is like before commiting to it, to the seasoned raider who just can’t get enough on raid nights, to the average nuclear family just wanting to spend some quality time together on a weekend.  I think if Blizzard will license it I can sell it for $49.99 for just the board, while a collector’s edition with game pieces and dice should go for $69.99.

Feedback is welcome.  I’m most interested in hearing how closely your experience playing the board game mirrors your raiding experience in game, as I am striving to make this as true to life as possible.

Click here to see the game.  Enjoy!  /snicker.

Last night I was full of fail.  Not just fail around the edges.  Fail pervasive.  Fail massive.  Fail epic.  Total fail.

Here are the factors that contributed to my complete and utter chock-fullery of fail:

1)  Technology

Despite the fact that I now have a nearly top of the line… well… everything… it wasn’t all working.  Nope.  The Razer Megalodon headphones/mic had crapped out on me the last Sunday when I raided.  After doing some research, I learned that this is a sort of common problem with these.  Great.  So glad I paid a pretty penny for that.  My research determined that I should try a powered USB hub for them, which I purchased and installed.   Didn’t help.  They still crapped out in mid fight several times and the mic didn’t work last night at all.  I spent the morning monkeying with this today and think I have them configured better… but am bracing for fail at our next raid as well.  You know.  Just in case.   Sooooo… half the times I could not hear my raidmates during bossfights and I was never able to speak with them at all.  Directions during the raid?  Lost on me completely.  Wonderful.

In addition, and even more exciting, I had total addon failure.  VuhDo, my healing mod, which had worked perfectly fine the previous Sunday when I raided until the internet crashed, was recognizing clicks only from my left and right mouse buttons.  That leaves 3 buttons that had crucial spells mapped to them (rejuv, swiftmend, lifebloom, wild growth, cure poison, remove curse) that were unavailable to me.  I tried what I think was the only strategy of my high school football team for all 4 years I attended good ol’ Central High… run the ball, run the ball, run the ball, PUNT!  I did some very quick reassignments of my most used spells and target command to my left and right mouse buttons, but it was a) clunky, b) incomplete, and c) ridiculously hard to remember on the fly.  By the 4th out of 5 bosses I had, between pulls, managed to locate and update the driver to my Razer Deathadder mouse, and was thrilled to find that my button functionality was restored.  I then had to REMAP my spells to their correct keys before I could heal like a normal person.

2)  Inexperience

Because of the timing of my total system meltdown last month and our vacation to the Rocky Mountains, I had only ever seen the first boss in the Argent Tourney raid prior to lasst night.  I had watched strats for some of the others, but I misunderstood where we would be headed last night.  I thought we were going to hit the Northrend Beasts hard mode, but instead we went right through the instance and cleared it on normal.  Therefore, there were at least 2 fights that I am ashamed to admit that I was almost completely unprepared for.  And I couldn’t hear the instructions in vent for one of them.  Sooooo… that was awesome.

3)  Lack of practice

I’ve been away from the game and raiding for about a month, and it shows.  The fact that this wasn’t exactly second nature for me when I was playing last night, combined with the fact that I was on a completely new system that was going through various stages of failure, left me pretty miserable throughout most of the night.

To my credit, I asked my raid leader before the first pull if he could replace me as soon as I realized VuhDo wasn’t working properly.  There was, however, no one who could come on to take my place, so I fumbled and bumbled around through the night, cursing my luck, my computer, and my damn hubris for posting how wonderful things were.  I was feverishly trying between every pull to fix one thing or another… my headphones, my mic, my addons, my mouse.  When not working on that I was speed reading boss strats.  And it was pretty much a craptastic return to raiding for me.  I felt a burden of guilt on me as my guildmates carried my dead weight through boss after boss.  /sigh.  So I got this…

But the achievement belonged to them, not to me.  The achievement they should have gotten is this one:

The bright side (I’m always trying to find one) is that I spent hours last night and today working through these issues and I think (?) they are resolved.  Time will tell.  I am going to try not to get my hopes up, although high hopes are kind of hard for me to avoid most days.  They’re in my nature.

I think that what this experience highlights for me is the amount of obligation I feel toward my raidmates to pull my weight.  I’ve never been as powerful a healer as the other healers in my guild since I joined Apatheia, although I think a portion of that can be fairly attributed to my old, wheezing computer and related issues.  I am anticipating a boost in my overall performance once the wrinkles are ironed out with my computer and I’m back into the swing of healing.  In addition, my raidmates have had a full month of raiding without me during which they have undoubtedly seen gear upgrades and so forth.  But these excuses do not help me to feel better about not doing my share to support the raid effort.  Last night I felt like a big, deciduous anchor knotted around our healing team’s feet.  It was not a feeling I relished and was particularly depressing given the anticipation and excitement that have been building up for me in relation to returning to raiding on a much better system.

I wanted many times last night to apologize to the raid generally, to thank them for the extra effort it took to carry me, whether or not they realized at that moment that that is what they were doing.  Although I knew that most of the issues I was having were beyond my control, I still found it very difficult to just laugh it off over and over again.

I joined a raiding guild not just to see the content or to get gear or to progress in the game.  I joined a raiding guild because I love the feeling of that teamwork, that large group effort that pays off in a shared experience of satisfaction and, sometimes, elation for everyone.  Not feeling a part of that,  just feeling that I was along for the ride, panicky and disappointed, was a bad feeling.  Terribad.

 Here’s to hoping that when Monday rolls around I’ll be pulling my fair share!

Not only did I join a new guild yesterday, I had my first raid with them in Heroic Ulduar.  Wow!  I had such a great time!  But over the course of the 3 and a half hours that we raided, I was incredibly humbled in two very different ways.

The raid was very organized, it started right on the dot, and everyone was very aware of what they should be doing and got it done like clockwork.  Everyone but me that is!  lol!  I didn’t actually expect to be tearing up all these Ulduar bosses I’d never seen before 12 hours after my guild invite.  It was a busy day and, although I read up on some of the bosses, I did not have time to study them all as I would normally have done.  Even so, the GM was great at giving rundowns of what we would be seeing on each boss and I managed to have a decent showing in terms of my healing despite my Naxx 25 gear.  We downed Flame Leviathan with 3 towers, XT002, Kologarn, Auriaya, Hodir, Thorim, Iron Council, and Ignis last night.  I got 6 achievements and a new necklace.  The guild was incredibly organized and paced.  It was a pleasure to be along for the ride.

But I died in a pancake.  I stood in some fire.  I was flash frozen on Hodir several times.  Overall, I was rather embarrassed by some of my missteps.  Don’t get me wrong.  The guild was exceptionally welcoming and kind.  They were extremely gracious about my mistakes and took it in stride that this was my first time seeing much of the content.  But I was still pretty hyper aware of my mistakes. Pretty humbled.

In my defense, however, not all of my clumsiness was due to the newness of all of this… new guild, new server, new addons, new raidmates, new strategies, new bosses, new voices, new names.  (Sylly, please rez so-and-so?  um…  can’t find him on my grid because I don’t know what color I’m looking for!  What class is he?  What class?  lol!).  While my awkwardness was certainly cause for humility and resolution to do better, there was a much deeper reason for me to be humbled last night than the surface details of the raid I was in.

While we raided, independently of one another and without knowledge that anyone else was doing the same thing, three of my friends from my old server came to my new realm and rolled alts, just so that they could whisper me to tell me that they loved me and that I would be missed.  One even named his alt “Lostnosyll.”  It was the sweetest, most touching, most unexpected and humbling thing I could imagine.  I honestly had not expected to get a whisper from a friend for weeks or months, until I actually made some new friends on my new server.  Yet here were three of the people I hold dear to my heart taking the time and making the effort to come and find me, just to make sure that I knew I was loved.  One of them actually farmed copper on his alt until he had enough that he could send me a letter in the mail telling me that I was important to him.

So the larger reason for my faltering performance, which had been pretty respectable up to Auriaya, was that it was at that point I started getting whispers from my old friends letting me know that I was loved and would be missed.  So when I was flash frozen in Hodir, it was because I was crying.

I have received such an incredible outpouring of affection from my friends and guildmates from my old guild that I am absolutely overwhelmed.  They have been here, posting on my blog.  They have emailed me.  They have called me and texted me.  They have come to roll new characters in a strange world in order to reach out to me.  I tell you honestly that this is so far beyond the scope of what I expected that I am truly, truly humbled.  Thanks to all of you.  I love you all and will make sure to come onto my alts on Duskwood to see you and make sure that you, too, know that you are loved.  My cup runneth over.

Edit:  This post needed an overhaul because… shock of shocks… I messed up the math.  Thanks so much to Mythology to pointing out my misstep so that I could get this post back on track.  Be sure to read the comments here for more insight.

In a comment to a recent post I did about stat stacking for restoration Druids, Viiryen observed the following:

Due to Replenishment, Int stacking yields more actual mana than any other stat because Replenishment is percentage based. A Resto Druid with 15K Mana will gain FAR less than a Resto Druid with 20K mana from Replenishment. That is, of course, assuming a high Replenishment uptime and not making much use of the 5SR.

To be honest, I had never considered stacking Int as a response to Replenishment in my raid.  This comment has had the creaky wheels in my brain turning ever since.  I decided to do some research into Replenishment.

The Basics

Replenishment is an umbrella term that actually refers to an effect given by three different spells available to toons specced into specific trees of their class.  Retribution Paladins have Judgements of the Wise, Shadow Priests use Vampiric Touch, and Survival Hunters bring Hunting Party.  Edit:  thanks Nibuca for pointing out that Mages and Destro Locks also provide their own form of Replenishment.  Although they achieve the replenishment effect in class specific ways, each of these abilities procs Replenishment, which gives up to 10 party or raid members .25% of their maximum mana per second for 15 seconds. 

Ghostcrawler has gone on the record saying that, as far as Blizzard is concerned, Replenishment is mandatory for raiding, in that they design their raid encounters around the assumption that a raid will have Replenishment available to it by bringing one of the Replenishment classes.  Let’s take a look at how this might effect Druid stat stacking.

Mana Regen mechanics of Int and Spirit

Both Intellect and Spirit contribute to mana regeneration for Restoration Druids.  The amount of contribution is dependent upon factors such as level and gear.  The formula for working these values out is, admittedly, over this English major’s head.  I’ve been looking at them from various sources for over an hour trying to come up with a coherent and basic description of how that works for this post, but I’m afraid I’m just going to have to toss this one out to the theory crafters and take their word for it.  Thankfully, others have gone to the trouble to work out the differences for me.

The following information is quoted directly from Ridley on the Restoration Itemization post on the Elitest Jerks forums outlining the mp5 value of one point of intellect vs. one point of spirit on gear for a Resto Druid with 1200 Int and 1200 Spirit.  The post was most recently updated on May 11, 2009.

Intellect
1 intellect provides the following:

• 1 intellect increases mana pool with 15 mana. On a typical 8 minute fight with Kings and IMotW this can be converted to 0.175 mp5
• Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 intellect increases your main mana regeneration with 0.325 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.162 mp5 in the five second rule (with Kings, IMotW and Intensity).
• Since Replenish works off the size of your mana pool, 16.83 (Kings and IMotW) extra mana means 0.210 mp5 more through Replenishment.
• 1 intellect also increases the chance you critically hit with spells by 0.00676% (this is with Kings and IMotW).

This sums up to 0.547 mp5 (0.560 with the meta gem) and a little bit of crit chance. However, this number can change a lot based on your intellect, spirit, Replenishment uptime, duration of the encounter and time spent in the five second rule.

Spirit
1 spirit provides the following (assuming Living Spirit, Intensity, Kings and Improved Mark of the Wild):  

• Assuming 1200 intellect and 1200 spirit, 1 spirit increases your main mana regeneration with 0.748 mp5 out of the five second rule or 0.374 mp5 in the five second rule.
• If you have improved Tree of Life, 1 spirit also increases your spellpower with 0.194.

 Now, as I admitted already, I’m not as good at the maths as some other geniuses out there (/jealous!), however, I think I can add this up.  One point of Int (based on the assumed stats of 1200 Int and 1200 Spirit) gives 0.547 mp5 with Replenishment up.  One point of Spirit gives 0.375 mp5 during casting, Replenishment or not.  We can’t assume that Replenishment will be up, neccessarily.  The abilities apply the Replenishment effect on up to 10 players.  If you have one source of Replenishment in a 25 man raid full of mana users… well… even I can do those maths!

Long and the short of it

This is an edited version of the conclusion here, and I owe some thanks to Mythology for sorting me out… 

It seems that when Replenishment is active during combat, a point of Int on gear is a clear upgrade for mana replenishment over a point of Spirit.   Out of combat, Spirit has a clear advantage over Int in terms of mana regeneration, as it seems to for 5 man dungeons without a Replenishment class, raiding without Replenishment or when Replenishment is not up, or soloing. 

Thus, it seems that a raiding druid would need to do some analysis looking at how often Replenishment is up for them during raiding and, perhaps, turn to Int as a favored stat over Spirit if they are looking to increase their mana regeneration.  I’m going to be interested to see if I can parse out the positive effects for me personally during our raiding using WWS.  If I can find some numbers of interest, I’ll be sure to put them up here.

In addition, I’d like to thank Viiryen for the comment that led to this post.  I absolutely appreciate that Viiryen took the time to comment here on the blog and led me to learn quite a bit more about the mechanics of Replenishment, an effect about which I had heretofore been quite uneducated. 

Ok, so I’m back in the saddle here again on the blog.  I apologize for my somewhat extended hiatus.  I had much to take care of in the way of my personal and professional life, and just needed some time to decompress, sort our my priorities, and, I admit, indulge in a bit of wound licking.  But I’m back and hoping to be in full swing on the blog again from here on out.  So, better late than never, here’s my earlier promised recap on my experiences giving healing assignments out for our 25 man raids.

As I mentioned earlier this month, we have been making a couple of changes in our guild structure and in our healing corps.  One of these changes was for me to get some experience giving out healing assignments as a backup for our regular healing leads.  I was excited to give it a try and get into the thick of things.  What I found out, above all else, is that the job requires a lot more work than I anticipated.  It is, in fact, extremely hectic and stressful!  If you have never had the opportunity to have this responsibility, thank your lucky stars, then thank your healing leads!  Here are some of the things I learned…

The responsibility does not begin and end with assigning healers for each fight

I took healing lead responsibilities on last week for 2 nights, during which we cleared Naxxramas.  Now, because we have this content on farm, and because we have many members with dual specs and with alts who also heal, I learned quickly that I was going to have to make decisions not just about what the healers would heal, but who would be healing in the first place.  We have a rule in place that you can run an alt on a boss so long as your main toon could not conceivably get an upgrade from the gear dropped by that boss.  So I had to determine whether some alt healers could make the run based upon this criteria.  In addition, many of our healers dual spec DPS, so I had to find out who would be willing to run DPS if needed to keep the number of healers in line with the content.  Finally, when one of our regular healers logged on late and there was a spot for him in the raid, I had to determine how to work him into the rotation without having too much healing in the raid.  All of these decisions were left to my sole discretion, as I was the healing lead for that night.  This was completely unexpected to me, and I suffered a crisis of conscience trying to determine who got to heal, who did not, and who would switch back and forth from healing to DPS as needed.

The healers have their own ideas about what they should be healing

There were several times over the course of these two evenings that I would give out healing assignments only to be met by whispers or chat in the healer channel questioning my directives.  Each time this happened I either needed to defend my decision in whispers or chat, or come up with new healing assignments.  In some cases, I did not feel comfortable coming out and publicly sharing my reasons for given assignments, either.  Sometimes, for example, a healer was given an assignment because, in my experience of running with them, they had just not performed up to a high enough standard for me to feel comfortable with giving them more responsibility.  When I was called out for this kind of a decision, I then had to go through the mental and emotional exercise of trying to decide, on the fly and as the raid waited for me to sort it out, how to handle the situation.  Once or twice I was grateful that healers reminded me of how they had a special ability or proclivity for an assignment on a fight different from the one I had given.  But even then I had to open up my healing assignment mod (I used Getting Things Healed), rearrange everyone, and post the new assignments.  It was very hectic and nerve wracking!

The pace was breakneck!

I found that in order to keep us moving along at our regular pace, I had to get my healing assignment mod opened up the second we downed a boss so that I could start making healing arrangements before the raid would be ready for the next pull.  I was working with an unfamiliar addon to do this, but thankfully Getting Things Healed was very intuitive for me and pretty easy to get the hang of.  But I would literally be fighting and healing trash with the GTH mod window open and taking up most of my screen, preparing for the next boss while we fought the trash in front of it.  My own healing output dropped pretty noticeably for the nights that I was the healing lead because my attention was so divided.  Even when I didn’t have the window open I was constantly thinking of other things, thinking ahead, sending out whispers… “what’s the name of the mind controlled guys?”  “Does the next boss require one or two off tanks?”   Add to this the fact that we had, I believe, 4 tanks with us, that the tanks were constantly shifting main tank/off tank/DPS so that I was always on the fly in putting up who was healing whom.  It was dizzying.

My mistakes cost money

I didn’t have enough healing power on Sapphiron for 2.. (was it 3?) attempts.  We have that dragon on farm, but we were wiping.  I tried to compensate by switching around one of my lower powered healers, but forgot altogether that I could just ask one of our dual specced people to switch to heals for that fight until we’d had a couple of attempts.  So we wiped more than once until I figured out that it was an HPS problem and not a healing assignment problem, costing everyone in the raid gold for repair bills.  This made me sad.

When you think you’ve got it under control, you don’t

We cleared construct, military wings on the first night.  Then someone decided that we should knock out spider wing in a speed run for the arachnophobia achievement.  O.O!!!  For the healing lead, this means setting up heals for three boss fights in advance, all at once.  Panic!  lol!  I ended up missing some of the early trash pulls in spider wing as I stood next to the 4 horsemen’s chest frantically thinking through 3 upcoming bossfights and doing all the work in advance to assign healers for them so that we could burn through all 3 fights as quickly as possible to get that achievement.  (We were successful, by the way!).  THAT was hectic!  lol!

All my preparation wasn’t enough

Although I did a lot of preparation in terms of studying different classes’ healing styles, the boss fights, available healing assignment mods, and other considerations, I certainly did not have everything covered.  What I know I missed was researching the plethora of shaman totems and shields.  Our healing leads are both shamans, and they take responsibility for assigning who will earth shield which tank, and who will put up which totems.  Yours truly, the leafy itinerant healing lead?  Not so much.  I forgot all about this when preparing and ended up, to my ongoing embarrassment, telling the shamans in the healing channel to “work out your shamminess amongst yourself.”  /facepalm

In all, the experience was a good one for me.  I learned a lot more about raiding that I had no idea I needed to learn.  I also learned a lot about raid balance and the decisions that raid and healing leaders have to make.  I do plan to volunteer to do this several more times in the near future to solidify what I’ve learned and make myself a viable resource for our healing leads to turn to when they cannot make a raid or are having a night when they just aren’t up to assignments for one reason or another.  In the end, though, I can report that it is not a job that I would relish taking on full time.  Raid healing is stressful in and of itself.  The added responsibility of taking charge of all of my fellow healers was much larger than I anticipated, and not one that I would want to have to pick up every time I logged on to raid.  Hats of to you, Dwyn and Shamrox, and to all the other healing leads out there in the World of Warcraft.  You have certainly earned my respect and humility.

We had a guild meeting last night to discuss some of the issues that are coming up for us in terms of raiding such as attendance and progression.  It was a good discussion in which everyone who wanted to was able to ask questions and make suggestions, and my hope is that we made some solid decisions about how to handle raiding for the coming weeks to best benefit the guild.  Following this meeting, we had an extended conversation amongst some of the officers in regard to raid healing.  While I won’t get into all of the details of that here, I can report that one of the outcomes is that I am going to get my feet wet as a lead healer so that I can backup the people who usually handle healing assignments and fill in for them in a pinch.  Because I’m a Virgo and simply can’t help myself, my preparations are already underway.  Here’s what I’m doing to get ready for the job…

Reviewing healer assignment mods

I was actually a little surprised to learn how many mods are out there whose sole purpose is to help with healing assignments throughout a raid.  I’ve found some good articles discussing various options, such as this one from Matt Low (World of Matticus) on WOW Insider, that gives a rundown of some of them, and also gives advice as to how to setup macros.  The healing leads in my guild currently use Heal Organizer, so I am reviewing that.  Another of my co-officers suggested Getting This Healed, which seems to offer more functionality than Heal Organizer that makes me currently lean in that direction.  Specifically, it seems highly functional in terms of allowing you to set different assignments for different phases of a fight.  Pretty cool stuff, IMO.  The jury is still out for me, but I’m sort of leaning toward Getting This Healed at this point.  However, I want to look carefully at the different options and haven’t been able to really dig into all of them, so I may change my mind.

Reviewing healing class abilities

Luckily, I wrote a series of posts within the past couple of months detailing the healing styles of holy priests, discipline priests, shaman and holy paladins in order to educate myself and other druids as to how these classes get the job done.  I’ve re-read these guides, and also poured over the patch notes since then to learn of any changes to each healing class.  I already had a pretty solid general idea as to what situations are opportunities for each healing class to perform at maximum, but I wanted to brush up in order to make the best possible decisions with my assignments.

Reviewing Healer Performance

I’ve also spent some time looking through our past WWS reports to get a feel for how strong each healer in our guild has been with various assignments on the different bosses because, regardless of the potential for a class, true output is very much dependent upon individual personality, gear, and playstyle.  I cannot predict how any healer will do on any given night with any given assignment, but I can look for trends that will be at least resonably strong predictors of relative success.

Reviewing Healer Specs

I haven’t gotten this far yet, but I’ll be spending some time in the armory looking closely at how each of our healers is specced and taking some notes which should help to guide me in making decisions on the fly in Naxx.

Reviewing Boss Fights

My trial run giving out healing assignments will be in Naxx on Tuesday, I believe.  Although I sometimes  feel as though I know Naxx like the back of my hand, in fact, I don’t.  Not really.  I know Naxx inside and out in terms of my own abilities.  For example, I know off the top of my head which bosses need decursing or have poision effects, but I am more shaky on which ones need magic or diseases cured.  Therefore, I intend to go through several strats for each boss there over the next day in order to take some notes that should help me when assigning the correct healer for each fight.  One of the decisions we made in terms of healing assignments is not to micromanage the healers, switching up the assignments for every boss and, sometimes, trash pull.  We’re hoping to move more toward a model where we give out assignments for a series of bosses, with exceptions as needed.  I am hopeful that my added research will help me to think about in advance, for example, the needs of a whole wing of Naxx when deciding healing assignments.

I have my work cut out for me, don’t I?  Although I’ve given healing assignments in the past, it has been very informal and not on a par with the standard that has been set by our healing leads.  I want to do as much studying up as I can so that my raid leader, my raid, and the healers I work with are confident in my ability to make good decisions and keep the raid alive.  I hope to post on Wednesday a sort of walkthrough of my experience on Tuesday night, the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Wish me luck!

One of the responsibilities that raiders take on is to raise their reputation with various factions in order to obtain items or enchants from them that will buff their performance.  Some of them also offer just cool perks, like achievements and titles, that you might be interested in picking up.  However, it is often hard to find out or remember what factions offer reputation rewards that are beneficial for you as you go through the game.  I thought I’d give just a quick run through of the reputations that offer rewards worth farming in Wrath of the Lich King for Restos.

Cenarion Circle - This faction makes its home in the druid city of Moonglade, but most of the ways to gain reputation with them are in Silithus.  The main reason to farm reputation with them at this point in the game is to get the title of Guardian of Cenarius, which is the coolest title ever for druids to have!

Cenarion Expedition is the other reputation you will need to grind to exalted in order to become Guardian of Cenarius.  Rep is most easily obtained for this faction by running the instances in Zangarmarsh.

Argent Crusade rep can be gotten from doing a number of daily quests in Zul’Drak and Dragonblight, as well as from doing champion level quests in the Argent Tournament.  You might consider raising rep with this faction if you are gearing up and needing a ring upgrade, as the the Signet of Hopeful Light becomes available once you reach exalted.  you can equip a Argent Crusade Tabard while running level 80 instances to gain rep with this faction.

The Kirin Tor reputation can be gained by doing the cooking or jewelworking dailies in Dalaran, by doing quests in Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, and Coldarra, and by doing the heroic instance dailies.  In addition, you can equip a Kirin Tor tabard while running level 80 instances to gain rep with this faction.  For someone with revered reputation they offer the Arcanum of Burning Mysteries, a head slot enchant that serves up crit and spell power, two stats that benefit Restos.  Also of possible interest is the Ghostflicker Waistband, available at exalted, which has Int, crit, spell power, and a blue socket, or the Robes of Crackling Flame, offering Int, haste, spell power, and a generous 26 mp5.  Those last two items aren’t specifically tailored to resto, but might be good choices regardless if they offer stats that you are trying to build for one reason or another.

The Knights of the Ebon Blade don’t offer a lot for Restos, but you might be interested in the Belt of Dark Mending, which has Int, Haste, and Spell Power on it for the exalted with this faction.  Reputation with them is gained largely through daily quests in Icecrown, and by wearing their tabard in level 80 dungeons.

The Sons of Hodir offer the best shoulder enchants in the game, so you really should focus on building rep with them.  There is a long, epic quest chain to open up rep with them, starting with They Took Our Men in K3.    Eventually you will open up 6 daily quests with this faction, and can also turn in Everfrost Chips or Relics of Ulduar for more reputation.  The payoff is the Greater Inscription of the Crag, available at exalted, which adds spell power and mp5 to your shoulders.

The Wyrmrest Accord offers another head slot enchant at revered, the  Arcanum of Blissful Mending, this time offering spell power and mp5.  In addition, you can pick up the Sandals of Crimson Fury from them at exalted, which offer Int, haste, spell power, and a blue socket.  There are a large number of quests in Borean Tundra and Dragonblight that will boost your reputation with Wyrmrest, and a tabard as well.

And that’s it for now.  Unlike in the Burning Crusade, Blizzard has not tied reputation to specific instances or raid instances in Wrath of the Lich King, so all of the needed or enticing rep items in this expansion can actually be obtained before ever stepping foot in a raid.  If you are a raider, you should absolutely work to gain the rep needed to obtain the head and shoulder enchants discussed above, if nothing else.  Even prospective raiders should do so, as guilds will look over your reputation to ascertain how deep your commitment to raiding actually is based upon whether you’ve worked to get these enchants.  So if you haven’t already, work these reputation quests/dailies/tabards into your routine and knock them out to be/become the strongest raider you can be.

I’ve spent the last day thinking a great deal about the changes to Innervate that are on the 3.1.2 PTR, tossing it around in my mind, throwing it at walls to see where it sticks.  I did try to do some testing of Innervate last night, but I don’t have much to report because I was only able to run half of a test after our raid when I had oodles of buffs before the game bugged out, booted me, and I came back with no buffs at all.  So I do still hope to do more testing of my own mana return rate with Innervate on the live realms and, possibly on the PTR, but it will have to wait until another day.  Although I don’t have the numbers to play with that I had hoped to have today, I’ve still had much to think about.  In the end, I believe that the Innervate changes for Restos are a mixed bag, bringing both benefits and detriments.  However, I’ve reached the conclusion, for now, that in the balance of things, any perceived nerf to Innervate for PVE raiding restos is slight.

Here’s the balance sheet as I currently see it on this change:

Buff -

• All druids can use Innervate effectively, whether they be PVP or PVE, Balance, Resto, or Feral.  In addition, we can use it effectively on all mana using classes, including those that don’t have Spirit based mana regeneration such as Paladins, Shamans, and Hunters.  This can be viewed as a significant buff for a raiding druid, if one thinks of a buff to the raid in general as a personal buff by extension.  Your Boomkin and Feral raidmates will be able to contribute to propping up your healing (or DPS) team in such a way that you, the Resto Druid, will need to pump out fewer heals to keep the raid going.
• large increase over current Innervate if Druid is not raid buffed, geared to end game, or both.  This should help soloing druids and those who are not raiders.

Nerf -

• Druids won’t be able to benefit any longer from proccing Spirit trinkets or switching out to high Spirit weapons prior to Innervating.
• The ability will not scale with gear.
• At highest gear/buff levels this will return less mana than the current mechanic.
• Spirit will not be as strong of a stat for us because it will no longer be tied to the effectiveness of our Innervate.

Point of Interest -

• although at higher gear levels, the percent of mana return will not scale with gear, the end effect of having that extra mana will continue to scale. In other words, each spell that you are able to cast with the returned mana will have a higher HPS scaling with the other improvements to stats such as Spirit (increased spell power in tree form), spell power, crit, and haste. You will not achieve the same percentage of mana return as you might from Innervate in its current form as your gear improves, but each point of mana will serve to heal greater amounts with gear upgrades, as it always has.

How good are the buffs and how bad are the nerfs?

From Ghostcrawler:

…we don’t necessarily want it to scale with gear, since that gets us back in the problem of being too good for PvE druids (regen stats are much lower on PvP gear). Furthermore, unless your mana pool grows from the 20s to the 40s by Icecrown (unlikely), you’re really going to be off by only a few K mana even at max gear. Furthermore, several mana-return abilities don’t scale well with gear.

We don’t want Innervate to give say 5000 mana to druids in a PvP situation and 25,000 mana to raid-buffed druids (I’m picking extreme numbers to help make the point). Mana is already too scarce in PvP (little Spirit on gear, fewer buffs) and fine in PvE (or honestly, perhaps still too abundant). A flat number in this case does exactly what we want it to do.

We don’t think the lack of scaling at level 80 is going to be any kind of problem unless we introduced say 5 more tiers of content without also bumping the level cap. We aren’t going to do that.

Lack of scaling is not something to be avoided at all costs. It is only important when it actually matters. If Innervate fails to scale when you have 60,000 mana at level 80, then it isn’t an issue because that situation will never come up.

What I am taking from this is that the developers, who know much more about where the game is going than we do, foresee that at the highest gear levels at top level the potential reduction in benefit will max at a couple of thousand mana points. 

Let’s be honest.  It has been my personal experience, and I have seen many posts that echo this since 3.1, that the much feared changes to mana regeneration in that patch have just not hit the Restoration Druid community that hard.  For every one person I’ve seen lamenting their mana pool stability since the patch, I’ve seen five say that it hasn’t hit them so hard, or at all.  In addition, the content that really was stretching our mana to the limit has recently been smacked all around by the nerf bat.  The list of recent damage reductions for Ulduar bosses is extensive. 

If you are currently a druid who is experiencing great restrictions due to mana regeneration, I’d love to hear from you and discuss why that might be.  Certainly we can all work to improve our output by making careful choices about gear stats, gems, enchants, glyphs, spell rotations, buff foods, potions/elixirs/flasks, overhealing, healing assignments, raid composition, and numerous other ways.  My mana pool raid buffed is currently up over 22,000 (sorry, no exact number.  I wrote it down at home and I am at work).  With an added 15,700 from innervate, that is a 37,700 mana pool.  If the fight goes on longer, it’s possible that my cooldown will come up and I can add yet another 15,700.  I can also throw in a mana pot.  I honestly think that, as much as I work to improve as a healer, there is no doubt that if it were my focus, I could easily shave the 2000 mana that might be “lost” from my Innervate with the upcoming changes out of almost any current boss fight I have encountered by focus and practice.  Not that I need it, but if I did it would be possible.  If, on the other hand, I had honed my spec, my gear, and my playstyle to its finest edge and came up 2000 mana short in healing a boss fight, it is almost certain that my DPS raid mates could do perform the same sort of re-evaluation and focus for their own toons and get that boss down quicker.  How much time would it take to cast 2000 mana worth of spells?  5 seconds?  10?  Or we’d get more gear.  Or we’d improve in some other way.

Now, while I like the idea of my abilities scaling with gear… who am I kidding?  I love it… I am inclined to let this change to Innervate fall into the category of a sidegrade in my estimation of it.  We all want to be as strong and powerful as possible.  Who doesn’t secretly long to be that amazingly OP class for as long as they could possibly get away with it?  But in the end, I think this is a change that may just not hurt that badly.  Like the mana regeneration changes of 3.1, it may be something that we barely notice at all.

/ducks behind shield

Let the flame wars begin!

/wink