Gear + Effort = More effort

Well blizzard finally decided to toss the RNG in my face. I had to tank FoS. And not just regular old FoS, oh no. heroic!

This is how it went down.

We all pop in. Shaman healer goes "I'm not healing a DK and drops" Prompt vote-kick. Confidence in me looks very high. I state "yeah if you're lazy it's not good to heal me, i can get you killed." Breaks the ice, everyones in a pretty decent mood. Had an overgeared warrior, a death knight and a hunter with me. Generally when I say "overgeared" i mean "to the teeth" Rocking 264 gear all over generally. How he managed not to pull off of me every pull is nothing short of miraculous, and awesome huntering.

Our replacement healer was a paladin, who, not only didn't bring anything to drink, but seemed to ignore the fact that he may have had to do something. Generally I don't pay too much attention to my health (or rather I'm trying not to as much) but when healer bob decides "I'm too good to have to heal" people die. He left at the first wipe, which was really nothing more than him not healing. Not more than one flash heal occurred, and I'll give you a hint, casters did not kill me. my love, anti-magic zone prevailed greatly against casters, so I died to simple "being beat in the face" damage

We finally replaced him with a tree, unsure of his healing. Sweet, new healer, new tank, we're a winning combination!

But in all honesty, he did a fantastic job.

Devourer was a story all his own though. I kited him out of his little puke puddles, and such thankfully. (kiting is so hard to remember to do. positioning is so easy, but after I'm comfortable its so weird moving things) It was all pretty smooth until laser beam time. our healer and overgeared warrior get caught in beam of awful. Oh no healths are dropping. Phantom blast is coming! anti magic zone! phew! Another! anti magic shield. Phew! another! oh crap, eat the damage, DEATH STRIKE DEATH STRIKE! eat more damage! and his limb corpse falls over. Check my health, 1300. I cry a little bit.

Tanking is freaking scary. I hope i don't get shoved into H PoS anytime soon, let alone H HoR

Oh hey there silithus. I see you have a prisoner.

Imagine if you will a game where you have to go to the ends of the earth to get materials to create armor that will not benefit you at all in order to shred it from this cosmic plane so you could use the base materials to become more proficient at enchanting pants to let you hit someone with a stick a wee bit harder.

Welcome to blacksmithing and enchanting at skill levels 270.

I've been fiddling around silithus for the past few days, as jaxx was our weekly, and lets face it, no one on this realm is doing it. I've delighted in the time off to properly level my trade skills on this budding DK because I want delicious stamina any way I can get it (well in theory I want lots of dodge, to artificially inflate my bone shield uptime, but thats another story entirely)

You know what, I've lost all interest in this post. Silithus does that.

Well I want to make a BM hunter too, so I can tame a silithid and bite someones face off, but thats another matter entirely.

DK dings 80. Adventures!

So my DK hit 80. I've been mostly having a field day with her. She's undergeared enough where things are dangerous, and she doesn't have enhancements "spirit wolves of might as well be invincible for the next 45 seconds". I can't heal myself whenever I want, so I can't piss off healers for no reason, not that I ever do, but the OPTION to is closed, so that's sad.

I started by buying a few tank pieces until it let me queue as a DPS. I do love that blizzard doesn't care if your gear actually functions well. Dungeon popped and my frost DPS journey began.

Loading screen. Oculus. Oh boy. Two drop right off. Healer says "Neither of you are geared enough for this place" and drops too. Tank and I chuckle about peoples attitudes. We get 3 more. The two dps have never been here, the healer is "undergeared" like us. Ragtag, my style. Tank cleans up garbage while I give a brief summery of how the dragons work. No big problems. It's an incredibly slow run mostly due to the seemingly random nature of how they designed the place. I tried to make the most direct route so people don't get lost. Pretty much works except on occasion where we all dismounted while a dragon was eating our faces, and wiped us.

Long story short, another wipe at Eregos mostly having to due with 2 newbies, but we tried it again and preformed beautifully. (Ps: I was ruby dragon. So easy.)

I mostly kept queuing as DPS and continually getting the "you're not geared enough" spiel over and over. I don't think I ever did less damage than the tank in any run and on a few WONDERFUL occasions i out-preformed geared guy reliably throughout the instance. Why this is fantastic is because I'm literally in worse gear than blizzard approves of. I'm not enchanted almost at all (I managed to get sons of hodir rep completely done since I had a stack of about 300 relics in my bank so I had pretty awful weapons I could actually runeforge). But sure ret pali guy. 4000 gs and 1.5k dps is necessary to participate. Lord forbid I go in with 2400gs and 1.5k dps! Oh wait...

I did eventually pick up enough from heroics to tank (although I'd really love a 2h weapon, so I could runeforge some defense and get some flexibility). I got a few glyphs and ran a few regulars with an encore performance of the oculus incident down to the "you're not geared enough" comment. Yes, not geared enough for regular oculus, when I'm rocking 540 defense. Ok jack.

Playing as an unholy tank feels very satisfying. I've played each tank briefly at mid levels just to get a feel for it. Warrior is frantic and versatile. Paladin is solid and autopilot. Bear is swipe and maul. Unholy feels very niche-y, which it is, but it's a good niche. I feel like a tank, instead of "that guy with more health than everyone" Preventing possible wipes by tossing up anti-magic zone is AMAZING. I really wish I had more talent points though, I can't seem to go for what I want.

This is what I'm rocking currently. Although it's only from experience in regular instances, my necrosis does literally nothing, clocking in at a typical 0.3% of my overall damage. Sure its only 1 talent point but I'm considerably constrained in other ways. I want points in dirge,unholy blight and virulence. Potentially I could shed points from necrosis, black ice, and 2 handed weapon mastery, but I'd never get to max desolation, and that's a full 1% dps increase I'd be missing. I tried the glyph of scourges strike but I really didn't like the uneven diseases, and diseases off my main target falling off (tabbing could work, but the more stuff there is, the more annoying it becomes). I do need to learn to refresh disease around the 3 second mark though. Refreshing before the last tick is a pretty huge dps loss when you consider how often you might do it.

Anyone have a internal dot ticker so I could determine when would be the best time to pestilence for a refresh?

Anyways, I wish bone shield lasted longer, it was off the GCD and didn't cost an unholy. Cmon blizzard add a talent called "improved bone shield" which increases the internal cool down by 1 seconds at 5 talent points! PvPers aren't going to like that huge investment, and tanks will eat faces for it.

Still, I consider AMZ so tree defining. Role defining. Wish it was on a SLIGHTLY shorter cool down, it doesn't exactly prevent a ton of damage. Feels good to soak up an entire blizzard with it, or just generally pretend as if a spell didn't occur. Man, I'd kill for a glyph for AMZ that lowered the cool down, or raised the damage it could take. I don't think a duration increase would do tanks any good; the 10 second window is pretty much perfect.

Ah well. Experiments!

I got to dps!

I got to DPS!

I also decided on the war token from the emblem vendor and remembered I could pick up my "revered" ring from ashen verdict!

Today was a good day for dpsing.

But most importantly, I GOT TO DPS.

And I did fantastic. Jaraxxus interrupter. Snobold getter offer? Hex the whatever the hell I want because hex is awesome. I can pretty much do no wrong when I dps, especially when I'm easily the most versatile of them. Fire resistance? No problem. 20% melee haste. My pleasure. Persistant snare aura during faction champs? I'm there.

I love half guild runs. We get to take the non-retard portion of our guild, and the non-retard portion of another guild, and be AWESOME, and pretty much one shot every boss attempt the second I arrive on the scene. (which makes it all the more awesome I was there, because they were wiping beforehand.)

I suggest everyone let their offspecers take a day off, by doing a half guild run. Only really works for 10 man guilds, where you can either do 5/5 or 12/13s but trust me, the "A-game" folk will really make it shine. When given the chance to FINALLY preform their main spec, they will never disappoint

PS: there might have been some dps. you know, just in case you didn't know.

I'm blending in and becoming a unique snowflake!

I've taken it upon myself to make a frost/unholy DK! gasp. One side tanks, the other side dpses.

Now the typical arrangement would be unholy dps, frost tank, and you would be right, but clever titles imply that you should know better!

I'm frost DPS, and unholy tank. Frost DPS reminds me of a pure distilled version of enhancement DPS. Icy touch/plague strike are my shocks, obliterate is storm strike, and blood strike is lava lash, and hey killing machine reminds me a lot of this talent called maelstrom weapons. I dual wield, I provide the 20% melee bonus, I give 155 agi/str. I've stated before I hated DKs (or if I haven't I'm sure its leaked into my rantings) and that is precisely the reason why, because they COPIED my class.

Now I'm all for classes being similar as long as they're intrinsically different, but the similarities are just too close here, so it tends to bother me. On the other hand, it's like a second class I can play, and get away with DPSing, and still provide all the buffs I'm used to providing.

However the tanking thing I haven't started yet. I wasted the money, and put full talent investment into a "tanking" spec for unholy (which basically consist of points into boneshield/AMS+AMZ plus the default 5/8/5 build all good dks use.) I need to make a lot of startattack macros and bind runestrike to everything (is there ever a reason to not do this?) Just a few levels and I can start the rep grind for starter gear.

I'm hoping I can encourage a little diversity in the guild (currently, I'm the only shaman. We have tons of dks and not so curiously none of them are frost DPS or unholy tanks) It's getting tiring to see the most cookie cutter stuff I can possibly see. The only chance I'm seeing of "unique" is a mage trying to be arcane, not liking it, since they leveled frost, and being frost. I can deal with it, but jesus, it's like no one else even tries other specs. FOTM club, this group is. Weird thing, is that everyones stuck like 4 patches ago, with destruction running rampant, blood is everywhere!

And I mean the specs.

Anyone else a fan of these "not as common specs?"

Give 70% effort!

I've been very unenthusiastic about my role in raids. I just heal all the time. I'm growing tired of it. I'm leveling a DK, so that maybe, I'll have a shot at what I want to do. ( i won't! but I can dream)

When I'm playing my character, and I'm not playing for myself, but for the group, thats fine. However if others aren't putting forth the effort to maximize their efforts, why should I?

I pointed out to my guild that in order to kill festergut (or was it rotgut? who cares!) we'd essentially have to be doing 5k dps each, without accounting for the tanks, without accounting for movement. A few people asked if I was serious, and I said I absolutely was. I guess it wasn't enough of a wake up call though. Effectively all I've done, is made our best geared member, more concerned about her dps because shes a clicker (pst: best geared doesn't mean best dps by ANY stretch of the imagination) and thats pretty much it. Everyone else seems content to do sub 3k on training dummies in full t9.

At the very least my co-healer is falling into his groove, and is finally starting to even out my healing numbers.

I think I should transfer.

Old Healer Survey

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Wouldn't you like to know? Resto, with a mix of enh for pve and ele for pvp.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

10 man raids and 5 man heriocs.

What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Riptide. I like the water. I also like that it's pretty much my only mobile spell.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Lesser Healing Wave. tends to not heal enough, and tidal waves has healing wave be about same length.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

Flexiblity. Druids are raid healers. Disc is single target. Holy is raid. Pally's are tank healers. Us shammys? We can do whatever we want.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Mobility. We have none of it. If you want healing on the move call someone else.

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

For me specifically? Put me in the tanks group, let healing stream do whatever it wants, and put me on chain spam duty.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I personally like disc best. Their bubbles interact nicely with shaman. See bubble spam tends to stop damage, and shaman are particularly good at fixing "oh crap" moments. It gives a nice few moments to triage properly.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Probably Holy Paladins. Sure they can handle the tanks all by their lonesome, but that leaves me with 7 other people I have to take care of. I can do it, but I don't like it. If I can three heal, I'm at my happiest.

What is your worst habit as a healer?

Knowing when to use my cool downs. Nature's swiftness tends to be very no-brainer for me, but tidal force is far more complicated to know when to use. The only encounter I've gotton used to it, is during marrowgar. I tend to burn NS pretty quickly there, so TF acts as my second "I"M FALLING BEHIND ON HEALING" cool down.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

Ranged that spread out, in an encounter that requires no spreading out. Way to gimp my performance for no reason whatsoever.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Personally I think we're sort of unfair. Other classes are pretty pigeonholed into their roles. Shaman can be a little too flexible on pretty much stationary fights.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

I briefly glance at recount to see what % of healing I've done. If I've done about 40-50% in a two healer encounter I'm good. Mostly I just want to see if I'm being carried or I'm carrying. or (heaven forbid) my partner(s) are doing their job.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

I feel like people there is a very "you are an AOE healer" mentality. If I was to list where I thought classes were in terms of a "Tank to Raid" ratio, Druids are 15:85, Pallys are 85:15, Holy Preists are 25:75, Disc is 60:40, and we're floating around 35:65 I'm not saying we're fantastic at tank healing, but given a 3 healer scenario I think we do best in a "floating" position, where we take care of damage that the "raid" and the "tank" healer cannot do themselves.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

That given our flexibility, gemming and glyph for us, is pretty much arbitrary. Not that there isn't a good way to do it, it's just that it's meant to mesh with your play style. Need more mp5? Gem for it. Want haste and sp? Gem for that instead. Do you have reflexes like an old dog? Go ahead and gem for the 3% +crit heals meta. They'll actually do just fine.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

Healing Wave > Riptide > Earth shield > Chain Heal > Healing stream. Fairly low overhealing. Maybe 20% I'll probably be clocking in at about 3500 HPS. My activity will probably be fairly low. I'm pretty twitch-healer oriented. I don't think about where damage comes from, I just heal it, unless it's super obvious (oh look sally's standing in the death and decay. Time to heal!)

Haste or Crit and why?

I prefer haste just because of the nature of style. I react to damage as it happens so I need higher amounts of haste to compensate. I'm very lax about haste/crit gear though. I'm pretty sure mine is pretty balanced, if not actually crit heavy.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Paladins. I've played preists enough to get the gist of how they function. Druids I'm a little fuzzy on, but nothing is terribly complicated about stacking hots, in specific ways to get healing accomplished. Paladins I understand have 3 heals, but its the support structure proping it up I don't understand. Talent trees are generally pretty clear on what something does, but the holy tree is oddly devoid of that information. I don't know what sacred shield does. I don't know how divine plea works. Or what hands can be used on who. Stuff like that. It easy enough to get "flash of light, holy light, holy shock" but the rest is when it goes to hell.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Chain heal is bound to 3. Healing Wave is bound to 4. If I hold shift and push either of those buttons, I have natures swiftness bound to it. Shift3 for CH; Shift4 for HW. Shift+E happens to be trinket+tidal force.

I'm learning how to use grid. Mostly I'm using it in the same way I used xperl. As a means to track where my earth shield and riptide are, and who has aggro. Aggro is clearer on grid, but ES and riptide were easier to track on xperl. I wish squares had more corners, ya know? :P I just want to know every heal on a person if at all possible.

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

I balance the crap out of my stats. It's taken literally having my guild carve out 2 +20 haste gems for me, before I even changed my sp/haste gems out.