Confession Time

I have a confession to make.

The guild my paladin is in requires BigWigs as a boss mod. I mean, they require Omen, oRA and BigWigs, and Grid/Clique if you’re a healer. That’s it. Not terribly stringent requirements, since I already had Omen, oRA and Grid/Clique.

I had never downloaded BigWigs, continuing to rely on my old favourite, Deadly Boss Mods. I resisted BW for a very long time because… well, they do the same damn thing. I still prefer DBM, to be honest, but I have to say that BigWigs definitely has useful tools to ensure you see that you’re standing in fire, poison, etc, that you’re standing too close to others on a fight where range matters…

But I downloaded BigWigs because, at some point last week, half the guild was like “crap, my BW is out of date”. And I thought, well, I should probably install it and run it simultaneously with DBM so I can get used to the BW sounds/warnings while not screwing up because I know how to react to my DBM warnings.

So, there we were, about to pull Saurfang on Wednesday, when I heard this noise and wondered what on EARTH this infernal pinging was. It had to be BigWigs, I reasoned, because it certainly wasn’t part of the fight. It sounded like I was on a submarine and we had sonar going and we were tracking other ships or torpedoes or something.

And then I saw it. A little square box had cropped up and had as its contents the list of people in my raid that I was 9 yards or less away from.

I stepped back two paces.

Silence. And a little smiley face in the range box.

Okay, I admitted to myself, an audio tool for range can really come in handy in a number of places.

Some of the warnings are a little too harsh — the screen shaking, the audio AND flashing colours, combined with raid warnings and such can make it a little confusing. But all of that is customizable.

I love my DBM. I really do. I think it’s a fine piece of craftsmanship. But I’m going to be running  both from now on, because BW just has that something extra. Plus, it was invaluable to me and my guild back in Hyjal because it would announce the types of mobs in the upcoming waves, and good ol’ Football (melee DPS officer) would call out assignments on the fly. “Shack 2, spell reflect casters, pally tank pick ’em up, warriors pull one each off him for kill targets.”

Apart from anything else, BW saved my ass twice on Thursday alone. Once, I was the person Rotface spewed his slime at — and it told me when I was targetted and not when he was done casting. And the second time was because I was TOTALLY healing my ass off and I almost got blown up by a slime. I would have been killed if I hadn’t run away, like a little girl, when my screen turned blue and shook violently, thanks to BW.

Having said that, I genuinely hope that the majority of the players in the raids DO NOT have BW installed. Why? Because they miss even the obvious things like range issues. If they actually did have BW installed, would they not NOTICE the big slime is going to explode? Would they not NOTICE that their computer is beeping at them because they’re in range of 8 other people? If they do have it installed and are still missing most of these warnings… I just don’t even have words.

By the way, you should definitely download DeadlyBossMods or BigWigs if you don’t run a boss mod addon.

Briefly, in other news, I’ve managed to outheal the other holy pally. Finally. He has this stupid tendency to judge light, CONSTANTLY. I mean, all the time. Even with ret pallies in the raid. But tonight, he didn’t judge light (no idea why) AND I got the following Rotface assignment:

– Beacon the MT, heal infected players

I even outhealed my RL friend, the resto druid/healing lead. The only person I didn’t outheal was the disc priest, and half of his effective “healing” was casting PW:Shield on people. I don’t normally get caught up in the numbers, but DAMN, did it feel good to finally not have all my heals totally sniped! I usually just focus on keeping my target up, which is usually the MT or OT, and keeping my beacon up on the other of them, but I’ve noticed that the other holy pally will tend to beacon his target and raid heal, unless he’s specifically told to place his beacon on someone else. (And then he’ll usually judge light.)

So now I know that I don’t totally suck and confirms my suspicions that the only reason I’m “so low” on the meters (which suck anyways) is because of assignment. My RL friend knows I won’t deviate from my assignment except for quick spot heals, so she gives me the job of primarily keeping the tanks up by virtue of direct heals and beacon.  And I do enjoy it, except that all the healers are also tossing heals on the tanks — the other holy pally (via beacon if not direct heals), my RL friend rolling hots, the priests dropping POM, Renew, using Penance and shields, the shammies with ES and Riptide and chaining off the tanks and melee… So, it’s very rare that I have high effective healing or show up huge on the numbers. Which is fine. It’s just nice to see for myself that a small change in assignments can bring out those numbers and I AM capable of doing them, when asked to do so.