They're a little weird ... but they're good at what they do.

I think it's funny sometimes how things come in waves.  I had an experience a couple nights ago that I was going to write about.  I then just happened over to Keredria's blog Tree of Life and noticed she'd just blogged recently on a similar topic with this article.

Our guild, RebirthII, decided to have an Ulduar 10 man day.  As I showed up it became apparent I'd missed out on the weekly raid quest, which was to kill XT-002 Deconstructor.  Nearly everyone else had done it in the guild group.  Not being much of a raider due to time constraints I'd missed out.  One of our main tanks, Irinbells, hadn't done it either, but knew a group that was getting ready to run.  I had him check, and they were up for some druid heals to go with the group they had together already.  So off I went.  Irin had one cautionary point to make though, "they're a little weird, and kinda young, but they're good at what they do."

As I joined, their leader Iceshaman sent the usual Vent settings over. "Is anyone here a lesbian?" is the first thing I hear as I join, spoken by some anonymous toon on their chat.  Irin whispers "see what I mean?"  The second thing I noticed is that the average age, gauged by sound of their voices, was about 15.  And I think that's because Irin and I significantly averaged their age upwards by being present.  Their leader Ice ran a tight ship otherwise though.  Once he found out I was new to the instance, he said I was with him.  Prior to every fight Ice gave a very to the point and clear message to each person what he expected them to be working on.  These were probably some of the best pre-fight summaries I've heard.  For the fight with XT-002 we ran like clockwork.  We were lined up one one column of the floor, and if you got a 'light bomb' dropped on you you were to run four squares to the right before it detonated, then come back to the middle.  If you got the 'gravity bomb' you were to go left.  I really didn't even need DBM as he called out instructions anyway as we went along.  "Tunin, light, head right", and so-forth.  

Yep, they were a little weird.  They were definitely young.  But like Irinbells had meantioned, they were good at what they did.  It was refreshing to run with a different group and have fun.   In retrospect, it was the natural born leadership of Iceshaman that made it a good time.

How about a ready check?

Just when I thought I was running out of little things that bug me...

I'm busy saving up my Frosts as there's some gear I've got my eye on.  Being as I don't raid much my main source is the first random daily heroic giving me a whopping two Frosts/day (wheee!).  So I que'd up Friday evening when things had settled down at the house and ended up with a Trial of Champions run.  We mounted up and took off.  Man, this first phase while mounted was taking forever.  We spent at least two to three times longer doing this than it should have.  At the end it became clear why.  It seems our tank's toon disconnected at some point, and with all the commotion of mounts running around I'd not noticed one of us standing in one place doing nothing.  I hate re-que'ing for a tank as you never know how long it'll take.  But after asking the other guys, they wanted the first tank dropped and then wanted us re-que'd.

As soon as I hit the que button, I typed "hey guys, that took forever and we don't know long this tank'll take... gonna take a two minute break and get my drink refreshed".   I came back in less time than that, to find everyone at less than 10% health, fighting on the other side of the ToC hall.  The tank's dyeing words were "dude, are you going to heal?".  My reply as all four of my teammates ghosted, and the remaining mobs charge across the hall at me, was "uhh, I'd said I was gonna be AFK".  His reply was that no one told him.  Great, a needless wipe, where I look bad.

Post mortem:  Everyone's seen a tank do this.  They join an instance already in progress, replacing a failed, disconnected or ejected previous tank.  They realize where they are, then charge ahead with a "lets go!".  Apparently this guy joined up within seconds of my leaving my chair.  No one in the group said "hey, the tree just afk'd" when he charged off.  That alone should have stopped the tank in his tracks.  But, whatever happened to the tried and true, simple "r?".  If you only get three replies then you investigate.

I must admit that I share some blame.  Unless you are an hour into trying to finish Occulus with a couple of people who have never run it before, you should be ready to finish a simple five man heroic at one sitting without getting up after you hit que.  I just wanted to stretch my legs real quick, freshening up my drink was my excuse to make an orbit around the kitchen.

"r?" would have prevented a wipe.

Disappeared there for a bit...

You'd think I fell off the edge of the Azeroth the way I've been gone.  The world is flat you know, Tuninn the DK has his Explorer title, he'd know.  Things have been busy.  Tunin turned 80 during a PUG at UP just over a month ago.  Tunin then started the progression towards getting his full epic gearset, and now am on a nearly full set since then.  (For the last few weeks, in real life, I've been nursing three broken ribs, and haven't felt like doing anything where I had to sit in front of a computer.)

The first things I had to do with Tunin is retune his glyphs.  Gone is Glyph of Healing Touch as I now have Nourish I can spam away if needed.  The glyph set I settled on are: Nourish, Innervate and Swiftmend.  My minors, for what they're worth, are Unburdened Rebirth, Glyph of the Wild, and Glyph of Thorns.  I tuned my spec tree a little more to one found I think at elitistjerks, and is an 18/0/53 variety.

Tunin has now healed his way through all the standard heroics.  He is currently working on the 3.3 patch heroics and has finished The Forge of Souls, and The Pit of Saron.  Tunin has been to Halls of Reflection once, and it was a bad day.  We wiped 5 or 6 times.  The main problem was that Tunin would draw aggro very early on while our group was hiding behind a corner.  Someone pointed out that I can't throw any heals until well after the tank has gained aggro as they were attacking me too soon, and he wasn't successful at pulling them off of me.  So two more times in a row, between waves, I'd stop throwing heals and yet aggro would again go straight to me.  We quit out of frustration, but I'm thankful they stuck with me for a PUG for so long.  It was afterwards, while doing some reading that I had another of my epiphanies.  HoT's generate threat during EACH TICK, not just when they're thrown.  My general practice in a 5 man is to keep the tank fully loaded with three Lifeblooms, and a Rejuv ticking on everyone.  This lets me hit a Swiftmend on anyone (remember, I don't consume mine as I'm glyphed) in a pinch, and/or hit with a Nourish as needed.  When the tank starts getting in trouble, and Lifebloom is nearly expired, actually leaving Lifebloom alone is the answer, as it'll bloom, giving the tank a massive healing burst.

Druids then, apparently have a major disadvantage in Halls of Reflection.  The majority of my heals are Hot's in nature, with occasional spot mends here and there.  I'll therefore have to change my tactics during this phase alone, and spam the crud out of Nourish ALONE.   This way, when we're between waves, I'll not draw aggro by having HoT's ticking away on every one in the group.  Since coming to this realization I have yet to actually get a random back to Halls of Reflection to try it out.

ICC Rep Runs.  Oh my these are fun.  Irinbells in my guild, Mok'Nathal's RebirthII, put one together the other night and I signed up.  It was actually my first prolonged sit-down in front of the computer in two weeks.  We had a blast.  Probably the best part was having all 10 of us chatting on Vent at the same time during the event.  I'll be watching TradeChat again to try and get in on more of these in the future.

Will sign off for now.  I'll keep track of the new tree strategie for Halls of Reflection and let you know.

Tunin(n).

Druid changes, and, the boy's makin' daddy proud.

Oops, it's been two weeks since my last post.  Things have been busy around the homefront (read - kid's baseball) as well as work.

There seems to be a lot of verbiage on the druid blogs about the proposed changes to the ToL with the upcoming Cataclysm release.  I decided to hold back and not comment quite yet until I had time to digest it a little.  I don't completely agree with the detractors of the changes.  Blizzard has realized that the Tree of Life is nothing other than a cosmetic change, as the ToL's abilities are already baked into it's spec.  There are a few benefits when changing into the tree, such as 6% more healing to party members, but by and large the ToL is cosmetic.  I think for me personally, I don't want to be changed out of ToL as it's become part of my personal image for Tunin.  Initially upon looking at what they want to change one begins to feel like the druid is getting nerfed.  No one wants to be nerfed.

My suggestion to Blizzard:  We agree, the ToL as it stands is mostly a cosmetic device.  Please show us how you're not nerfing what resto druid healers can already do, but are extending what we can do with a cooldown.  Please make being taken out of ToL form during "off" cooldown times visually optional.  Distinguishing between the two, ON vs OFF cooldown, could be as simple as having an aura on the tree while his/her cooldown is being used.  Think shadow priests, but different.  This will make these changes more palatable to those of us who have tied our personal images to our trees.

On another note.  The boy is making his daddy proud.  My oldest son has caught the healing bug (quite the oxymoron there).  He's apparently been watching over daddy's shoulder enough that he decided this looked like more fun for his pally.  As such he respecced into a healadin a few weeks ago.  I've already watched as he progressed through his "epiphany" stage that I went through as well.  He's in his low 70's now, so we'll be watching at how he progresses up to 80 with his new toy.

Priorities

Like it or not, healers do have priorities.  They generally go Me, Tank, Other (read DPS).  Priorities do shift at times, as I've sacrificed myself in the past to give my dyeing heal to a tank or the lone DPS left at the very very end of a boss's life.  But by and large, I'm here to keep my tank alive.  If DPS gets healed then consider it as icing on the cake.  Don't get me wrong though, I don't like having any deaths on my runs.  As a very strong rule of thumb, if I can keep the tank alive we're all gonna make it in some form or fashion.  The issue I'm taking way to long to build up to is when DPS begin asking for heals.

I like pulls begun with everyone completely topped off.  I know within one or two pulls who my top aggro pullers are going to be.  I usually have a HoT ticking away on them as well as my tank.  I can't stand starting a fight with someone's HP not fully topped off.  I can only imagine that most healers have this same mindset.  We all know someone who's happy to run off and start a pull with 75-80% HP, or half their mana.  This drives me nuts, it's an itch I have to scratch.  Which leads me to my next issue.  If you're at less than 25% HP, and you're not taking (many) incoming heals, then there are other current events going on around you.  I promise, you were taken into consideration during this pull long before you realized your health was low and that incoming heals were slow.  I've already made a priority list in my head, quite some time ago as this began to take shape.  Apparently you weren't on the top two (or three) of the list.  Get over it, I'll get back with you as soon as I can.  Seeing "Heal please" go across my chat box just adds one more item of information to process at an already stressed time.  I'm not a vindictive person, but I'd be lying if I said the thought had never crossed my mind to reorder someone's priority from "4" to "5" after such a request.  ;)

I actually had two great examples of this laid out in my head, but decided their specifics would be a moot point.  It does however make me wonder back to when I was playing with my DK as one of the lowly (heh) DPS.  I can't remember if I ever made the cardinal sin of asking for heals or not.  If I did ever do this in the past, then to the healer there that day I say this.  Sorry, I was but a young grasshopper who had not yet learned the way.

Epic Fail Tank.

A couple nights ago I ran across an Epic Fail Tank, but not for the reasons you'd initially think.  Wanting to pick up one more random run Sunday night, my oldest son and I hit the LFG button while teamed up.  We ended up in UK with an average group, but an 80 lvl DK as our tank.  I've run across lvl 80 DKs tanking non-heroic dungeons before.  They usually will own up to wanting to practice a new spec, or just not ready to be in charge of a heroic 5 man yet with their gear, etc.

Our first pull was large.  He went in and basically pulled the whole first set of mobs.  I was able to keep him healed up.  Luckily no one pulled major agro from him though, a few touch up heals here and there for everyone else.  I commented to him, "feeling a little enthusiastic are we?" or something to that effect.  The next couple of groups to drop the fire were no problem.

Then we entered the Dragonflayer Pens.  I'd learned in the past that I can judge how well a tank will do later in the dungeon by how they fight the first dragon to the left as we enter the room.  He didn't turn the dragon around.  A good tank turns the dragons around while fighting them in order to keep his DPS, and me , from taking flame damage from the dragon.  In my experience, a tank that doesn't turn them around either doesn't know he should because he's new, or my new category, he doesn't care.  Single dragon dispatched, we went to the moved on.

We began the next pull of the dragon and his handler.  About 8-10 seconds into the pull another dragon came across my field of view.  Uh oh, someone must have backed into agro range of another group, been there done that.  My initial feeling is 'no problem', this tank can handle the challenge, I'll just keep everyone topped off.  Then I saw the chat window.  The DK dropped two lines:  "Hahahahahaha", and "Have fun dying!"  Then he left the dungeon having run through the room and agro'ing every mob in the Dragonflayer Pen and dragging them to us.  Obviously, we wiped shortly thereafter.

Thinking back this had to have been his plan all along.  No big investment to him as we were no more than 5 minutes into the dungeon.  He was out to have some fun creating a major wipe and leaving with us helpless.  I'm not the vindictive sort so I don't think I'm gonna drop his name.  But it is written down.  As he's on another server I'll probably never run across him again.  Should I though, I have a special tanking death planned for him.  ;)

Anyone else ever have problems with a tank intentionally taking a group in to die?

Cooking got a little easier

Just got Tunin up to 450 cooking skill.  It took Tuninn (the DK) much more work to do the same thing.  Before patch 3.3.3 one had to buy recipes from the vendor for 3 Dalaran Cooking Awards, to get up to lvl 425.  One then had to finish out with either Gigantic Feasts or Small Feasts until one got all the way up to 450.

Since the 3.3.3 patch, I was able to buy Firecracker Salmon for 3 Dalaran Cooking Awards (as usual) and go all the way up to 450.  So what's happened is that it seems Blizzard has changed the cooking recipes so that they stay yellow all the way up to 450, instead of greying at 425.

I'm guessing they're trying to help people get to a cooking lvl of 450 prior to Cataclysm coming out.  That way they can lvl cooking there to whatever the new upper level SuperGrandMaster Chef is.