Valithria Dreamwalker

Well, I’m back to raiding. I took Sunday night and Monday night off, then showed up on Wednesday and was feeling okay, if a little worn out. I was feeling much better on Thursday when the raid began, though. We raided for 3 full hours, killing the blood princes and then cleared to Dreamwalker (killing a sort of a miniboss in there? I got an extra Emblem of Frost from some damn mob).

I was both totally prepared and not remotely prepared for the Valithria Dreamwalker fight.

Under the Totally Prepared umbrella, we have:

– Glyph of Seal of Light (instead of my typical Glyph of Seal of Wisdom – although I brought an extra one of those, too, obviously, to reglyph back to my regularly scheduled awesomeness)

– Libram of Tolerance (instead of my typical Libram of Renewal, although I’m thinking of picking up the ilvl 226 Libram of the Resolute)

Under the Totally NOT Prepared umbrella, we have:

– no spellpower flasks or elixirs

– bad flying coordination inside the portals to stack the buff effectively

– bad timing inside the portals to ensure the buff wouldn’t fall off between portals

– had no idea how freaking often the damn portals SPAWN

– had no idea what the best way to TARGET the stupid dragon was

I realized on my first attempt (the guild has already done Dreamwalker on both 10/25, but I missed out on the 25 due to being sick and the 10 by virtue of being sick and hating 10s) that targetting the dragon was going to be a problem.

“… target the dragon with your mouse, Kurn, then spam Holy Light. WTF.”

I know. I did that for my first attempt. It was very poor. I was trying to judge mobs to keep Judgements of the Pure up (ahahahaha, forget THAT nonsense in the freaking chaos) and all the time I lost in switching targets and also in switching targets back to Dreamwalker meant I was getting frustrated as crap.

“So… use a focus, Kurn. Geez, this isn’t rocket science.”

Well, that’s exactly what I did on my second attempt. (We had 9 wipes before getting her down… up?? on the 10th.) Except that HEY, focus targets that you’re focused on in one phased area VANISH if they’re not targettable in another phase!

So not only is Dreamwalker not sitting there on my Grid, but the focus mechanic is basically useless to me, right?

Third attempt, I made a macro.

/focus Valithria Dreamwalker

Then I edited my Clique frames to include my ShadowedUF Focus frame (I use ShadowedUF) as well as my Grid frames. So all my happy Clique bindings now worked on my focus frame. I dropped my macro someplace useful on my bars and would hit that as soon as I came out of every portal phase and went back to my regular Holy Light bombing.

At that point, having gotten the mechanics of healing the great damn dragon in front of me down properly, I turned my attention to not sucking at getting green orbs.

The most stacks I had at any point was about 16, and that was twice in all of our attempts. In other words, I FAIL REAL GUD. I was getting better at getting a quick rebuff once I was back inside the portals, but if I didn’t have at LEAST 3 seconds left on the buff before zoning back into the portal, I was screwed.

And, on our final (successful) attempt of the night (yes, Apotheosis, the Infamous Last Attempt is not just a phenomenon that happens to us!), some dick ninjaed my portal from me at one point, leaving me to deal with this thing called “regular mana regen” for a full portal phase. Ugh!

I’m seriously considering buying the 251 level versions of two more pieces of tier and gemming/enchanting them with spellpower, along with chunks of T9 and other old gear, so that I basically have a spellpower set specifically for Dreamwalker. I’m going to have to sit down with my gear in my bank and figure out if that’s at all possible, but I’m thinking that it can’t be a bad thing to try to boost my spellpower for that fight.

Oh, the best part about the Dreamwalker fight? 9% overhealing.

I don’t remember the last time I saw that number. Ever.