Category: hunters

Sigh.

Kurn / / cataclysm, hunters, ramblings

Things to say about the hunter preview. I won’t get into everything now, but I do have things to say about it. I did want to address the resource change, however, if only briefly.

Honestly, I just want to hold my mana bar and never, ever let it go. I understand why the change, though — hunters are ranged physical damage dealers. Melee stuff doesn’t really affect them. But they have some similar stats/damaging effects to melee. But they’re not casters either, so caster stuff doesn’t really affect them. But they have a depletable resource in mana that means they’re LIKE casters.

Hunters have always been betwixt and between, in my opinion. Even more so now; they have mana but Chimera and Explosive shots are magical damage, not physical. Back when Aimed Shot was, you know, actually *aimed* with a 3-second cast time, and Serpent Sting was something you sneered at, THEN we were a physical damage class. But right now, we’re a screwed-up hybrid class that can’t tank or heal. But we’re still very much like hybrids.

I don’t think that removing the mana bar is the solution to the problem. The problem is that they want a resource that is not infinite and, in today’s raids, hunters just don’t have mana problems. Replenishment, Aspect of the Viper and Viper Sting work better than feigning/drinking ever did. So hunters basically never go out of mana and it ceases to be a valuable resource, because there’s never a shortage of it.

Focus introduces that shortage. Shots look like they take a lot of focus and it emphasizes more Steady Shot (and I guess Cobra Shot?) use while you regen your Focus.

I don’t think this is the way to fix hunters so that they have to worry about a resource. But similarly, I can understand that to nerf the hunters’ mana regen would nerf everyone else’s mana regen. You can’t just remove Replenishment entirely. You can’t make the regen from it too low. Could you remove tools like AotV? Sure… but what hunters even need to use Aspect of the Viper in a raid these days? And that would harm hunters in dungeons and while questing.

I suppose you could make hunters immune to Blessing of Wisdom/Mana Spring and Innervate. And mana potions. But that’s not a good solution, either.

Clearly, I don’t have much of a solution. But I don’t think Focus is the answer. It’s an answer. But I don’t like it.

General updates.

Kurn / / arenas, hunters, parses, raiding, ramblings

1) Emerald Vigor now has a combat log entry!!! Rejoice, readers of parses!

2) As you may be able to tell from my recent achievements, I have started doing arenas with Majik and my brother. I did some 2s with Maj yesterday, will do some 2s with my brother today, then the three of us will do some 3s today. All I have to say is that I hate warlocks more now than I ever did in BC. But Majik’s new unholy spec works very nicely to give us the burst we need and my PVE spec is actually not half bad for arenas. I decided to get on the arena bandwagon with the guys because I did a VOA25 and my Wrathful legs dropped… and I won them. Heh. With some honor and some emblems of triumph, combined with other drops I’d previously gotten, I still have crappy resilience, but it’s better than none at all. I don’t feel like what priests must feel they’re wearing. And we actually won 7 (and lost 7), most of the wins coming after Majik switched specs.

3) Got bitten last night on Blood Queen, which was just WEIRD. It was in the last minute of the fight, though, so I didn’t have to bite anyone. I think someone screwed up significantly for me to get bitten. But hey, it got me my achievement!

4) My brother has applied to a casual raiding guild and he did ICC10 for the first (real) time last night. (He’d previously gone in and attempted Festergut on a pug a couple of times and done a couple rep runs.) I looked at his parse and he didn’t do too badly at all. He’s a good player, don’t get me wrong — this isn’t surprising or anything. But it seems so weird that he’s a HUNTER. My brother has only ever been a resto druid or a rogue in raids. He was very good at what he did. He’s very good at what he’s doing now, too. I’m kind of proud of the kid. I’m less proud of the fact that I explained all the fights to him  in detail, rather than have him go to tankspot.com, mind you. ;)

5) Emerald Vigor! Combat log entry!!! YAY! :D

More later, including the insanity that was Ignis the Furnace Master Must Die! I just wanted to share those bits.

Random Dungeon Storytime!

Kurn / / facepalm, hunters, lfg, mages, paladins, ramblings, shamans

So last night, after my raid (in which I did awesomely in terms of numbers since I was the only holy paladin in the raid), I did the random heroic on 3.5 toons.

On the paladin, I got Utgarde Pinnacle. Nothing seriously good or bad happened except that an enhancement shammy got flattened by Skadi or whatever his name is and, *while* I’m casting the rez, he’s all “rez plz”.

So I’m like “I was, you know, casting the rez.”

“ty”

And the tank, a gnome DK, was like “U MAD? LOL”

The tank, who was subpar to begin with, got put on ignore after the run. :P

Then poor Kurn got Oculus. >< Not only did I get Oculus, which I desperately was not in the mood for, but the holy paladin healer was a dumbass who clearly does not know how to read chat.

As I do in every random run where there’s one paladin, I hit my Drums of Forgotten Kings macro.

I don’t know. Maybe I should figure out how to actually link the item in the macro. Why? Because after waiting about 15-20 seconds for an acknowledgement or the pally to actually start buffing, neither of which happened, I buffed kings.

The pally, IMMEDIATELY thereafter, started buffing everyone… with 10m kings.

My buffs. Granted, it’s Oculus. And we spend half our time on stupid dragons. But really? Overwriting my 8% kings that has a 30m duration with a 10% kings with 10m? Instead of giving me and the DK and the two feral druids might? Instead of giving him or herself wisdom? And you’ll note there’s Crusader Aura, too. Guess what aura was up THE ENTIRE RUN? That’s right. Crusader Aura.

The paladin met my ignore list right after the run.

Then the shammy healed… Utgarde Pinnacle. Yet again, my tank was a gnome death knight. Apart from no one initially picking up the harpoons, and the mage AND warlock pets pulling unwanted mobs on TWO separate occasions (I let the mage die because of it), it went fairly smoothly.

At this point, I was exhausted and wanted, desperately, to go to bed. But just one more random on my mage for the Emblems of Frost, right? Couldn’t be too bad, right?

Wrong.

I get Halls of Lightning. Eh, better than Halls of Stone, I reason. So I buff everyone, put down a table, put Focus Magic on the resto shammy and we’re off.

We do the first pull and the tank runs down to the second pull and I start casting Blizzard.

“don’t forget to flamestrike and then downrank flamestrike” the resto shammy whispers to me.

“I don’t really use Flamestrike,” I reply.

“you should” he says.

Now hold the phone, here. I’m 57/3/11. That’s an Arcane build. Near as I can figure, along with WoWWiki, talents which improve Flamestrike’s damage are:

Ignite, which I don’t have

Critical Mass, which I don’t have

Fire Power, which I don’t have

Pyromaniac, which I don’t have

So is there any reason for me to cast not one, but two ranks of Flamestrike with 0 fire talents benefitting it when I can just cast Blizzard? Blizzard has, near as I can figure, three talents in the Frost tree that directly benefit it, and only two of them benefit its damage. Improved Blizzard doesn’t increase damage, but adds a chill to it. Piercing Ice would give me 6% more damage to Blizzard and Arctic Winds (which I can’t seem to link to from the talent name, for some reason, but is at http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=31678 ) would give me 5% more damage to Blizzard.

Ignite gives me 40% more damage if I crit, I’d get 6% more chance to crit from Critical Mass, I’d do 10% more damage from Fire Power and 3% more chance to crit from Pyromaniac. So shouldn’t I just cast Blizzard? I miss out on 11% damage from Frost talents vs. 10% damage from Fire talents, but I miss out on Ignite and the extra crit chance to help proc Ignite if I cast Flamestrike.

Basically, is it just me, or did the resto shammy think I was a FFB mage?

Since I hadn’t (and still haven’t fully) done my research, I just stopped responding, but he kept it up. I told him that I was just playing to have fun, get my badges. “but thats why your last” he said. I checked my recount. I was, indeed, doing less damage than the rest of the DPS. But really, this is my 4th 80, who has been 80 for less than a month. Do I really care?

“Dude,” I responded, “this is my 4th 80. I really, REALLY don’t care.”

Shortly thereafter, we had a death in the group. One of the DPS died on a pack pre-first boss. Well, we then accidentally (?) pulled the CHARGED boss. So we had a pack of trash, PLUS the boss and his adds.

Other DPS dies.

I start focusing the adds, being that I’m the only DPS still alive. The resto shammy is typing, all in caps “RUN BACK RUN BACK” and the DPS are basically just lying there. “after the boss dies” they said. Apparently, they didn’t understand that it was POSSIBLE that the boss WOULD NOT DIE if they didn’t run back.

So it takes something like five minutes. And the resto shammy wants us to WIPE so that the dead DPS don’t “get a free badge”. So he actually RUNS AWAY from me and the tank and doesn’t heal the tank for the last 40-some seconds of the fight. Well, over the course of the five minutes, I used 2 mana gems, an evocation and a mana potion and we finally got the boss down, no thanks to the resto shammy.

So he’s all like “i’m not rezzing you” to the dead people and I just snapped at him.

“Dude, you’re just a dick,” I said.

“says the fail mage,” he replies.

“Fuck you, buddy,” I said, then left the group, putting him on ignore. I don’t normally give people the opportunity to report me for even something as minor as profanity, but my patience was at an end.

In all fairness, perhaps I am a fail mage. Perhaps I SHOULD be using two ranks of Flamestrike or whatever on AOE. I honestly don’t know. But that guy was my definition of a jackass. Everything he said set me on edge, his suggestion to WIPE on the first boss was ridiculous and clearly he’s a nimrod if he wants to NOT heal his tank so that he can better facilitate his stupid wipe idea. I also think he’s a bad healer for letting two of his DPS die, but hey, if the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault, usually.

So I left the group, ignored him and logged off and went to bed. :P

And now I’m doing research to figure out what my AOE spell should be. Clearly, Arcane Explosion is a deathwish, since I wear cloth. :P

And this post from Critical QQ says I should use Blizzard. Granted, the post is 9 months old.  Eh, I’ll figure it out.

So those were yesterday’s randoms. I hope today’s will be less interesting.

Huntard Sighting

Kurn / / facepalm, hunters, lfg, ramblings

I ran my daily random heroic on my shammy today and was greeted with Old Kingdom. They’d already done the first two bosses (although I don’t believe the dungeon finder told me it was already in progress) and were going down to the fungus boss, with Jedoga and the last guy both still up.

Honestly, every time I see a huntard, a tiny part of me dies.

We got to Jedoga after the fungus guy. To refresh your memories, Jedoga Shadowseeker is the one who summons volunteers to make their way towards her and we have to kill them, lest she get a buff from them that can, in many circumstances, kill a tank. So I remind them, as the healer, to not stand in Thundershock and to kill the volunteers when they become active.

We have no problems downing the volunteers and the boss, so we go on and finish up the instance.

But then, out of curiousity, I checked my recount’s damage and facepalmed. Here’s the damage from the Jedoga fight.

Top DK was DPS. The pally was DPS. The second DK was the tank. And right there, above me (thankfully) is the huntard.

Just low DPS isn’t my problem. Nope. I don’t care about low DPS. We killed the boss with no issue. My problem is this:

So hang on a second here. He did 3013 damage to THE THREE VOLUNTEERS? His PET did more damage to volunteers than he did? As if that wasn’t bad enough… he used Volley. I’m sorry. VOLLEY. On a single-target fight? VOLLEY?

Here’s his breakdown. On the whole fight. 11 autos, 4 hits of Volley (so one cast, it looks like), 3 steady shots and FIVE, count ’em, FIVE concussive shots. Conc shot is on a 12 second cooldown. So… I’m sorry, did he nail all three of the volunteers with it (I’m not sure that even works, to be honest) and then hit the boss with it? Twice? Even though bosses are immune? What the hell was he doing, just standing there?

It makes me want to cry.

Problems with all this:

1) Not enough focus damage to volunteers. Although we can give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe, MAYBE Concussive Shot works on them and MAYBE he was focused on slowing them down. But that’s your first global. Don’t just stand there like an idiot. Hit Arcane Shot, Multishot. ANYTHING to up the damage on the volunteer. DROP A TRAP, for crying out loud! (He’s BM, so he has no Chimera Shot, no Explosive Shot and also isn’t specced for Aimed Shot.)

2) Don’t use Volley for single-targets. Had it not been his SECOND kill of Jedoga, according to his armory, I wouldn’t fault him for using Volley once. But of all the abilities to use on this fight, Volley is the stupidest one. In the first place, there is no point in the fight where you fight more than one mob. Period. In the second place, if you’re using it on a volunteer, yay, EXCEPT the volunteer moves OUT of your Volley circle.

3) Even BM hunters have a shot rotation. According to the Warcraft Hunter’s Union (written by Frostheim, who now does Scattered Shots at wow.com), it is this:

  1. Put Hunter’s Mark on target (usually before combat begins, or as part of a macro)
  2. Send pet in to attack
  3. Put up Serpent Sting (reapply to boss when it goes down)
  4. Arcane Shot
  5. Hit Steady Shot or Multi-Shot/Aimed Shot until Arcane is off cooldown

Didn’t notice HM either way, but he did use his pet. But there’s no Serpent Sting damage, there’s no Arcane Shot use, there’s just auto, steady, conc and volley. Don’t even look at his armory. It’s even more painful than his poor play. IT HURTS, PEOPLE. IT HURTS. :(

Granted, he just dinged 80 on January 12th, according to the armory. So, okay, yeah, he’s still learning. But WHY is it so difficult for people to do even the slightest amount of research on HOW TO DO SOMETHING before they wind up in my groups? In your groups? In anyone’s groups? (I also had a fail bear tank in my UK run today on my hunter and a fail pally tank in my DTK run on my mage today. Sigh.) Take an hour. Read up on your talent spec, your glyphs (huntard is missing a major glyph), your gems, your enchants, your gear and YOUR CLASS ABILITIES and how to effectively merge them all together to become one kick-ass killing/tanking/healing machine.

Please.

Wow.

Kurn / / dungeons, hunters, paladins, ramblings, world events

The mind boggles. I just tanked Heroic Halls of Reflection, not using the wussy LOS strat, with a total pug. My healer was a priest who still had blues.

And we didn’t wipe. No one died. Everyone worked together as a team.

Granted, we then did the wussy ledge strat for the escape bit, but considering how well they’d done on Falric and Marwyn, I didn’t complain too much. They deserved an easy run.

Good to see some people still know how to use their class abilities.

Also, I got BB King on my hunter! Coming soon, a video of the event, because I frapsed it. :)

Another 80 and some musings.

Kurn / / dungeons, general, hunters, mages, paladins, ramblings, shamans

Well, the mage is 80 and it’s led me to some thinking about my alts and how I play this game.

My first toon, forever my “main”, even if I don’t raid with it, was Kurnmogh and I love my hunter all day long. Kurn and I have been through it all together. But sometime in there, I rolled a bank alt toon, which ended up being a human female paladin, named Madrana. Levelling Madrana (as holy!), back in the day, was a welcome reprieve from farming Essence of Air out in Silithus, which is basically what I’d do on Kurn when I wasn’t raiding or couldn’t get a guild group to go to Strat UD (my favourite instance) or UBRS (for my bloody T0 chestpiece!).

Madrana got to be a pretty awesome healer, pre-BC, even if most of her heals were Flash of Light and I didn’t understand half the mechanics of a pally.

Burning Crusade launched and my brother rolled a human warrior on a PVP server, where some of his RL friends played on Horde side. His goal: to level up and kick their asses. I know, my brother is a dork. So he calls me up when he’s level six or so and is like “I NEED A HEALER COME HEAL ME!”

Having already levelled a healer to 60, there was no way I was going to do it again (haha, I was so sure back then…) so he encouraged me to roll up a DPS class. And so my mage was born. I hit 30 and then discovered the utter chaos of Southshore on a PVP server. So I left Darkspear and brought the mage “home” to Eldre’Thalas — and my brother brought his warrior over.

At some point during this time, I also rolled a shammy, who would eventually be Katarah, but she started life as Shockra. I know, horrible name, eh?

I got the hunter, pally and mage up to 70 in BC but ignored the shammy.

In Wrath, I got the hunter, pally, shammy up to 80 and then got the priest going. And I’m getting a druid up there, too. :P

I think that, for the most part, playing my alts (not necessarily levelling them, but playing them) is my break from my raiding “job”. I raid 12 hours or so a week on Madrana and I heal, so it’s work. I like to get Kurn into whatever raids I can because I like to take pride in my hunter and I like to see how I’m doing compared to people playing their toons full time.

I got the shammy up because I wanted to understand healing better, from a shammy perspective. I’m not quite sure that I do, but I definitely know that I can’t DPS worth a damn on the shammy. ;)

And then I started playing the mage, for fun. And with the advent of 3.3 and the dungeon finder, I was having a BLAST going through instances on my mage. True, there was usually a wait, but I loved learning these stupid instances again from the perspective of a pure caster. I’ve sheeped things! I’ve provided food! I’ve buffed intellect! Good times.

Now that there are the four 80s (whose recent achievements are on the right over there… the order is Madrana, Kurn, the shammy and the mage), with a fifth to level by Cataclysm (stupid druid), I have plans.

Madrana is saving her Emblems of Frost for tier gear, first and foremost. Kurn, meanwhile, is upgrading via Emblem of Frost gear from the vendor, not going for tier armor yet, because hey, I don’t have access to the marks that drop in ICC.

Kurn is also my leatherworker, so after enough rep runs and such, I should be honored with Ashen Verdict and be able to buy patterns for various boots — boots that I’ll use on Kurn, the shammy AND Madrana, probably, because the crafted plate boots just aren’t as good as the crafted caster mail boots.

So how to fund the purchase of Primordial Saronite and such? Simple. The shammy and the mage will be using their Emblems of Frost for Primordial Saronite and finish gearing themselves up with Emblems of Triumph.

Both of them should get 19 Emblems of Frost a week, assuming no ICC runs, until the new VOA boss comes out (Tuesday?) at which point they’ll get 21 a week, one would presume. It’ll be slow, but at least I won’t have to spend 3000g on a single Primordial Saronite. I don’t know how many the shammy has, atm, but I’m pretty sure I’m into the 40s, so I’ll have enough to purchase the patterns as soon as Kurn hits honored.

So that’s the plan.

Also, I’m 18/0/53 on the mage. I’ve glyphed for Frostbolt, so it no longer slows (!) but causes 5% more damage, and I have Focus Magic and Torment the Weak (which I really didn’t understand, but TOTALLY do now — everything is a damn slow! Go go TTW!!). The mage’s achievements are hilarious, because I’m a brand-new 80, so everything I do is an achievement. Got a dungeon/raid emblem, achievement. Didn’t use the defense crystals in VH, achievement. Etc, etc. It cracks me up.

Happy new year, everyone. Looks to be an exciting year in terms of WoW. :D

Kurn's Guide on How to Behave as a Healer in Dungeons

Kurn / / druids, dungeons, guide, healers, healing, hunters, paladins, patch 3.3, priests, ramblings, shamans

Kurn’s Guide on How to Behave as a Healer in Dungeons

You’ll note that I don’t specify “random” or “heroic” or “raid” dungeons. That’s because I believe that my guide is good for any level healing class in any size of dungeon, be it 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 or 40. It was inspired, of course, by the fact that I’ve done more 5-man regulars and heroics in the last week since 3.3 came out than I have in the previous five months, but there are some good basics here of which all healers should be aware.

Why am I writing this? Because I’ve run tons of dungeons in my WoW career as all three roles (healing, tanking, damage) and every time I’m on one of my toons, there’s always at least one moron who doesn’t know how to appropriately behave in a group. Always. And those are the GOOD groups.

So, from someone who raids primarily as a holy paladin, who runs anything she can with her hunter, who will reluctantly tank as her paladin, who pugs raid content on her resto shammy, who plays a mage in the 70s and has a dual-specced resto/feral (tank) druid in the 70s as well, here’s my guide for healers.

1) Heal. This is a bit of a no-brainer, I know, but a long time ago, on a server far, far away, I used to group with the warlock officer of my guild. Awesome person. Great warlock. She had a priest alt. And she’d levelled the priest shadow. But when she got to 60, she went holy to heal us in 5 and 10 man dungeons. So there we are, in UBRS, doing the Father Flame event and someone dies. “Oops!” says the warlock-priest, “My bad! I forgot to heal! I was DPSing.”

<3 her all day long, but if you’re that kind of a player who primarily plays a DPS class and has a healer alt (or DPS main spec and healing offspec), remember what your role is for the group. If you’re a healer, you heal, even if you’re bored. (I get very bored at times on my paladin and my shammy. So I feel for you. But you still should pay most of your attention to the health of the group instead of what % the boss is at because Murphy’s Law will step in and kill your healing targets while you’re innocently DPSing away.)

2) Heal the pets. No joke, I’m not kidding, pets are an important part of the group’s DPS and rezzing/resummoning pets can be time consuming for the other players, so make sure that when you’re healing the group, you’re healing the pets, too. 3.3 means pets will be taking a lot less damage now, but it’s still important to keep an eye on them.

3) Prioritize. Basically, prioritizing is the key to healing. Your top priority in a 5-man is the tank — but don’t forget about yourself. If BOTH of you are in mortal danger and you don’t have Beacon of Light up or Binding Heal at your disposal, do what you can — Nature’s Swiftness for both druids and shammies is there for a reason. Remember the age-old saying:

– If the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault.
– If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault.
– If the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault.

You’re responsible for everyone in a 5-man, but the DPS has to take some responsibility for themselves and the tank has to take some responsibility for you.

4) Know which heals to use. I’m not going to go through the zillions of healing spells available to holy paladins, holy priests, disc priests, resto druids and resto shammies. But suffice it to say, your spec and class abilities give you lots of tools to heal with (yes, even paladins have lots of spells these days!) and you should know not to, for example, use Lesser Healing Wave on three separate people when one Chain Heal will do the job. You should not cast Healing Touch on each group member when one Wild Growth would have sufficed. Don’t drop a 20k crit Holy Light when a 4k Flash of Light would have been fine. Don’t cast Prayer of Mending when your target needs Penance or, gasp, Greater Heal.

But how do you know which to use? Practice. Get used to what your spells are healing for. Turn on combat text and get an idea of the ballpark. Then when you’re healing your group, if you’re using frames that show you the difference between current health and maximum health, you’ll have a much better idea of which heal to use. I strongly recommend Grid and Clique for raid frame addons, by the way.

5) Move out of crap/away from adds. Having said that, if you, as a healer, die because you wouldn’t move out of the fire, poison, void zone or whatever or you die because you let adds beat on you without trying to run to the tank (or bubbling or fading or even shadowmelding), that death is entirely your fault. You’re not a tank. Well, you might be, but not when you’re in healing gear in a healing spec. :P Healing is about being aware of the group and their health — that includes you and your environmental awareness. Don’t be that idiot standing in the fire. (I’ve been there and done that, myself. Not a lot of fun!)

6) Cleanse your group. This might seem like another no-brainer, but you should be dispelling/cleansing everything you can off your group. Your priority is to heal and you might have to heal through a lot of debuffs if they pile up too quickly, but as soon as you can, start getting them off of you, your tank and the group. (Cleansing Totem is probably the best totem in the entire universe.)

7) Buff your group. Prayer of Fortitude, Divine Spirit, Shadow Protection, Gift of the Wild, *Greater* Blessings and group-appropriate totems!

A specific note to shammies: Totems are always a little tricky. If there’s a DK in the group, you shouldn’t need to drop Strength of Earth and can drop Stoneskin instead (or Tremor as needed). If they have a few points into Frost (for Icy Talons), you shouldn’t need to drop Windfury. Otherwise, look at your group composition. If you have yourself and two or more caster DPS, go with Mana Spring and Flametongue, along with Wrath of Air. But if you’re the only mana user, consider Windfury instead (unless already covered by a DK).

Depending on the group, I typically drop Strength of Earth, Mana Spring, Flametongue and Windfury, so that both melee and casters get two of my buffs.

Basically, just be aware of what’s already covered by your group and don’t overlap buffs. :)

8) Use your defensive cooldowns. Priests have Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression, paladins have Hand of Sacrifice and many have Divine Sacrifice. Use them. They are life-saving abilities. (Tip: Don’t use Hand of Sacrifice without bubbling first and you should still expect to have to heal yourself after Divine Sacrifice if you use it without bubbling.)

9) Inform your group when you need mana. If you actually say in your group chat that you need mana, then when the idiot tank runs in and pulls the boss before you’ve even had a sip of water or nibble of a mana strudel, at least you can be like “OMG WTF I SAID I NEEDED MANA”. Never assume that your tank is remotely considerate of you. And even if you do get a considerate tank, the DPS may not be.

Example: I was tanking Halls of Lightning with a RL friend of mine who was healing me on her priest. We were in the hallway with the statues on our way after the first boss. She hadn’t stopped to drink after the boss or the first wave of mobs in the hall or the second wave (since there was a fear and the hunter got feared further into the hallway for the second group). So, because I know that healer mana is not necessarily infinite, I waited for her to sit and drink as I watched the idiot mage in our group run full speed ahead to trigger the third group.

I almost didn’t taunt off the moron and then said, in party chat, “If we could possibly avoid pulling when the healer’s drinking because she’s out of mana, that would be appreciated.”

So the best way to avoid misunderstandings or bad pulls like that is to announce your status to the party. And I don’t mean by being annoying and typing /oom six times in a row. “My mana has waned!” can only be heard a few times before people start to go insane. :P (Yes, Kylon, if you’re reading, that’s a reference to you and that BRD run from when you apped to Fated Heroes. YERL! <3)

10) Be patient. Easier said than done, I know, healers. But even though you want to use a baseball bat to beat the people you’re grouped with (whether in-guild or a pug — it can happen either way), you need to take a deep breath and realize you’re not going to be stuck healing those morons forever. Dungeons, even the longer 5-mans, take about 30-35 minutes of your time. Raids obviously take longer, but generally have a fixed end time. If you’re sitting there, wiping on Anub’arak on heroic mode for the 38th time that week, take a deep breath, look at the clock and tell yourself you only have another hour or so to go.

11) Resurrect your dead group members after combat has ended and you’ve gotten a bit of mana. Period. No excuse not to. The only time you shouldn’t be expected to rez the dead is when you died. My philosophy is: if your healer has to run, so do you. Of course, if someone has to afk real quick, the benefit of the doubt should be given, but if the dumbass is chatting in group or whatever and isn’t running, tell him or her to start running their ass back to the instance. I have, in the past, back in Shadow Labs, I think, forced the group to wait on a rogue who died and didn’t run back instead of rezzing him. The entire time he was running back, he was arguing with me and I finally managed to get it through his thick skull that his resurrection is entirely based on my kindness and I don’t take kindly to people who don’t even make the effort to run back. (Tip: In a raid situation, rez healers/rezzers first and if you’ve been the recipient of Divine Intervention, ALWAYS rez the pally who cast DI on you first! It’s only polite.)

12) Don’t do too much. Okay, that’s not a specific thing for when you’re healing in a dungeon. But I had to mention it anyways because healers and tanks can burn out really, really quickly in this game. Why? There’s all kinds of responsibility on their shoulders and people are WAY too quick to judge. Both are thankless roles. In fact, if healers and tanks do their jobs right, no one should notice anything — because people lived and the tanks held aggro. And since healing meters are a terrible way to gauge your performance (unlike DPS meters for the DPS classes), it can often seem like you’re doing your job without feedback or encouragement.

In the past, I have countered this, in general, by not doing 10-man raids. And not doing any 5-mans that frustrate me. Nope, my paladin basically did her 25-man raids and that was it. And then came Emblems of Triumph and I needed a bunch of Emblems to make use of the Trophies of the Crusade for gear. Suddenly, I was doing 10m VOA, 10m Ony and even the occasional 10m TOC/TOGC, in addition to 25m VOA, 25m Ony and the guild runs of 25m TOC/TOGC. Ugh!

Thankfully, Emblems of Frost are only attainable through the 10m and 25m versions of Icecrown Citadel — and the weekly raid quest. And daily random heroics. And there aren’t separate hardmode timers for ICC, so there’s only two raid lockouts for Emblems of Frost to drop. Whew.

So I’m doing four bosses in 25m ICC, four bosses in 10m ICC and the weekly raid quest. The daily random heroics? Well, I keep signing up as a tank *and* a healer, but I have tanked every single random heroic I’ve done thus far: Azjol’Nerub, Old Kingdom, Gundrak, Halls of Lightning, Trial of the Champion, Utgarde Keep, Forge of Souls… I’m losing track of them all, but it means I’m not healing nubs and I’m getting a lot of practice tanking.

So really, that’s not a lot of healing I’m doing on my paladin. Granted, I’m healing daily on my shammy, but she’s not doing any ICC yet and has, like the rest of my toons, stopped running Onyxia and VOA (at least until the new VOA boss comes out). I’m reserving ICC for my hunter and my paladin right now, so that’s not any extra healing.

I know someone who, I kid you not, was healing both Ulduar 10 and 25 on two toons every week, in addition to healing Sarth3D 10-man zerg attempts, plus VOA on both 10/25 on both toons. That was too much healing for her. Even half of that is too much healing for me and too much healing for most sane people. There’s just so much time that you can spend healing up other people in any given raid week, IMHO, and the further you stay back from that limit the more you’ll enjoy the time you ARE healing and the less likely you will be to burn out. Everyone’s limits are different and you should be aware of when things are starting to feel like an obligation instead of a fun part of a game.

Anyways, all of that said, healers, even you part-time healers who are discovering healing through the new 5-mans and random dungeons, thank you for your dedication, for being the ones who choose to clean up after everyone’s mess. There are never enough healers and *good* healers are extremely rare. So I hope that this guide has helped you out a bit and that you know that you’re appreciated in general for the choice you’ve made to heal through portions of this funny little game we play.

LFG, ICC and other assorted acronyms.

Kurn / / dps, druids, dungeons, facepalm, healers, hunters, icecrown citadel, paladins, patch 3.3, raiding, ramblings, tanks

As I write this, I’m waiting for a random Lich King Dungeon for my mage, who is now 75, thank you very kindly, and I’m amazed by how long it takes to form a group.

Compared to, of course, level 80 instances that I DPS on my hunter.

Or any level instance when I queue as a healer or as a tank.

Hell, queueing up as a healer AND a tank means you’re never going to ever, ever wait. It’s hilarious. I’ve done the random heroic every day (from Wednesday on) on my paladin, queued as both a healer and a tank and so far, I have tanked: Nexus, Forge of Souls, Azjol-Nerub and Trial of the Champion. I have healed nothing.

Ooh, VH for my mage!

…Interlude for discussion of VH-related fail…

… the DK tank just wiped us on the first boss. Granted, it was the kite boss. But, the DK tank hasn’t dropped death and decay once and he had no presence up WHATSOEVER, much less FROST presence, until wave 5.

By the end of the second boss, the DK tank seems to have learned to drop D&D, has been in Frost Presence and has hauled ass to portals in a reasonable manner.

And yet, by the end of the instance, it appears that the DK tank did not learn from his mistakes. At all.

Happily, the healer was also from Proudmoore, so we queued up for a random dungeon together, with her in her tank spec (she’s a druid) and got the same ele shammy as in VH, plus a priest and a ret pally. We ran DTK randomly and VH (not randomly). How is it possible to reset a dungeon from within the cross-realm LFG interface? We couldn’t seem to reset DTK.

Anyways, it’s nice — my mage made a friend. And is 3 bars from 76!

Right, so, where was I? Oh, yeah, queueing up as a tank AND a healer.

So those are the two roles for my druid, right? So I’ve taken to doing this before I queue:

– check spec.

– put on opposite-spec gear.

– queue for whatever I want.

– get called in to tank or heal and, once zoned, only have to change EITHER spec OR gear to match the role I’m in.

Basically, I’m sitting there in tank spec with healing gear on, but my queues generally go like this:

Tank, tank, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, healer, tank, tank, tank, tank… tank.

There ARE no tanks out there for lower level instances and so very few at higher levels.

In other news, thanks to some gratuitous trash-farming, Kurn has the Ashen Band of Vengeance while, due to a guild ICC25 and a pug ICC10, Madrana has the Ashen Band of Wisdom. Kurn has yet to kill a single boss in ICC (though not for lack of trying on Deathwhisper 25), whereas Madrana has killed them all twice already, once on 25 and once on 10.

My thoughts on ICC:

– Trash is icky unless you know what you’re doing.

– The first four bosses are basically a review of Black Temple with a hint of SSC and just a sprinkle of Hyjal.

– Marrowgar might be a little overtuned in 10s, but seemed like a pushover in 25. I worked HARD in that 10-man pug, which was mostly some guild’s run. They’re not amazingly geared, but they’re good enough that they shouldn’t have had to struggle as much as they did. This fight steals from SSC’s Leotheras the Blind (whirlwind), Hyjal’s Archimonde (the fire, although it doesn’t chase you) and BT’s Naj’entus.

– Deathwhisper is a little overtuned in 25m, I think. The big Death and Decays are fine, the deformed fanatics/adherents are fine, the resistance to various forms of damage based on mob type, all fine. The MC + the Curse of Torpor need to go or at least  be nerfed on 25 or else your cleansers/CCers HAVE to be on their game. 10m is a freaking pushover in comparison. This fight steals from the Shade of Akama fight, in that you deal primarily with adds until the boss comes out.

– Gunship Battle is HILARIOUS. I love it. The guild one-shotted it, I believe, and the 10-man only took four attempts or so. Got it by the skin of our teeth, mind you. But we got it anyways. :)

– Deathbringer Saurfang. 3 tries on 25m. 2 tries on 10. And I even got this on 10m:

stormingmess10

That’s I’ve Gone and Made a Mess, which was originally a reference to our good ol’ buddy Moroes in Karazhan, because Saurfang originally Garrotted, the way Moroes did.

– The best item in the ENTIRE GAME, hands-down, drops off 25m Deathwhisper: Zod’s Repeating Longbow. I haven’t seen it, but it’s in the drop table at wowhead and OMG. Reference to Superman II? WIN. “Kneel, son of Jor’El! Kneel before Zod!” God, I love that movie. If Kurn can get this bow, ever, I may never replace it. Okay, so I probably would in Cataclysm, eventually, but it would sit in my bank right next to my Rhok’delar.

Other achievements I’ve recently gotten include the BEST-NAMED ONE EVER.

retreating

That’s “We’re Not Retreating; We’re Advancing in a Different Direction.” I got that with my RL friend, the resto druid and three of “our” guildies, although I was on my hunter which not everyone knows about. I laughed my ass off when I got it.

I’ve also been getting a lot of rep while doing the new dungeons. Madrana got these:

mad15

And Kurn got:

kurnknights

Both Kurn and Madrana have gotten:

lfm

Which brings us back to LFG and the dungeon tool.

There I was. Level 71. Tanking, on my druid, in Azjol-Nerub. (As if I don’t deal with Anub’arak enough as it is!) I’m in with a 74 rogue and a 76 DK, as well as a 73 mage and a 72 priest.

I can’t keep aggro off the 76. And have trouble with the 74 at times. And because I’m always taunting off of them, it’s tough to get aggro back from the healer. So I basically stopped worrying about them and worried about the healer. Because, as we all know, if the tank dies, it’s the healer’s fault, if the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault and if the DPS dies, it’s their own damn fault, right? :D

So the DK is all like “wow tank how come you cant hold aggro?” And I mention that he’s never on my target, so yeah, he’s going to pull aggro. And then I say:

Me: “I’m trying to taunt off the priest and so my taunts aren’t up for you.”

Him: “thats what im doin waht ddid u think i was doin to boss” (I think this was referencing keeping on my target.)

Me: “Watch your Omen. If you don’t have it, get it. Better, run an instance that’s suitable for your level.”

DK: “funny mate funny”

Me: “True, I can’t keep aggro from a level 76. I’m not supposed to.”

DK: “still ur a tank”

Healer: “a tanks job is to keep aggro off the healer, a dps job is to keep aggro off himself now lets stop arguing”

DK, to me: “u cant ever hold agro off all us so stop telling me what to do”

Me: “You really don’t understand the mechanics of this game…”

DK: “what fuck u talkin about now”

DK: “what u think im doin”

Of course, this was all happening during the trash and boss fight for the second boss in Azjol-Nerub. So as soon as we were done:

votekick

I’m going to write three how-tos, I believe. How to Behave as a Tank/Healer/DPS in random dungeons.

The overriding rule to them all is, of course, don’t be a fucktard dick.

Haha!

Kurn / / hunters, ramblings

3.3 gets the thumbs-up from me thus far, even if I have yet to get loot from the end of Halls of Reflection yet.

That’s okay, though. I got Orca-Hunter’s Harpoon from Halls of Reflection (the beginning) and Felglacier Bolter from Ick in the Pit of Saron.

1) FINALLY, I have replaced the stupid Staff of Trickery, which I have been using since shortly after 3.1 launched (I guess?).

2) I HAVE A BOW AGAIN. Okay. It’s a crossbow. But that’s okay. I don’t have these stupid explosions in my ear while playing my hunter again!

Also, I win at this game.

There we were, my heroic Pit of Saron group from earlier this morning.

Everyone died.

Except me.

I think they were standing in poison and crap. But anyways.

They were like “omg kite!”

And I did. I kited Ick all the way over towards the enclave where Jaina and the freed slaves are. My pet had long-since died, but Explosive Shot and Kill Shot and Disengage are for the win.

After what was surely only about 15 seconds of kiting, Ick was down, but for me, it was all kinds of epic. And my group was cheering. “YOU RULE!” “THAT WAS AWESOME!” “OMG YOU’RE NOT A HUNTARD!” and such.

I feel huntastic today.