Dear Lord, so much to catch up on.
Basically, nothing happened in Ulduar on Wednesday. Except that we died. A lot. On Thorim. What a bitch that guy is.
Thursday, we got Thorim down after about 2 hours, after some practice with a slight change in our strategy that involved me, a holy paladin, being the sole healer in the tunnel. As opposed to Wednesday night. When a holy priest and a resto druid were in there. Or as opposed to earlier Thursday night, when just the one holy priest was in there.
<drums fingers on desk>
Right, so you substitute the LEAST MOBILE healer in the entire game for the two MOST mobile healers in the game for a portion of the fight that includes a lot of running around.
<drums fingers on desk>
I had a couple of hairy moments in general, sure. And one pull, I lost my tunnel tank entirely — looks like it’s because he had two adds on him at once. Maybe a mage screwed up?
Anyways, in the span of 3.5 seconds, he took 45000+ damage and was only healed for 5519 from a non-crit Holy Shock, about halfway through. Nothing I could do, I was still casting.
But apart from that, it worked really well.
So here’s my question: Am I really that awesome or do the TWO healers who did the job on Wednesday truly suck? Because, really, there is no WAY I should have done better in the tunnel than either of them. But I kept the group up pretty much the whole evening. Lost the tank once, lost one mage once. Aaaaaand that was it.
I mean… priests just have way too many tools to not get through that. Prayer of Mending. Renew. Power Word: Shield. Seriously. Just… so many tools. Meanwhile, a druid may have fewer tools, but they have the mobility that I lack. While strafing left and right, they can use Lifebloom, Wild Growth, Rejuvenation… I have Holy Shock followed by an instant Flash of Light IF Holy Shock crits.
So, really. I don’t get it.
Anyways, due to the fact that I was in the tunnel group (and will likely be stuck in the tunnel healing forever, now), I got an achievement.
Of course, our Thorim kill was extremely messy. How messy? Four people standing, that’s how messy.
1 elemental shammy, 1 enhancement shammy, 1 warlock and 1 disc priest.
This is how I died:
Thorim Chain Lightning hits Madrana for 52531 Nature. (23927 Resisted)
Yeah, he kind of enraged, too.
Due to various circumstances, I had to log at that point for over an hour, came back and they just had killed Ignis and then called the raid. No raid Saturday this week or next, so my next raid is Monday.
Which is good, because hi, Noble Garden and Orphan’s Week, you pieces of crap.
Like I said in a previous entry, Kurn gets the world events and their titles, Madrana gets raid stuff.
Thank God, because no WAY was I going to do Noble Garden on Madrana after doing it on Kurn. NO WAY.
Camping/running around for eggs? Dumbest thing in the entire universe.
Laying an egg in Un’Goro when you can only turn into a bunny when a friend casts it on you? Also dumb.
I managed to get it all done, but WOW, did it suck.
Last achievement was Desert Rose, dropping a flower just across the border from Tanaris in Thousand Needles.
Which meant that I was now free to focus on Orphan’s Week. Oh, the joy.
It’s actually not a hard bunch of achievements… just do some dailies with your orphan, eat some food… and do some battlegrounds. Oh, God, the pain.
First of all, Arathi Basin’s assault a flag is stupidly easy.
1) Get into a fresh AB.
2) Run like hell for Stables, make sure you’re mounted and have your Orphan out.
3) Cap Stables.
Seriously, it was that easy. Not so bad, right? Well, not yet.
WSG’s return the flag sucked. I played like, four games (I know, I know, but remember that I hate to PVP and that four WSG games is equivalent to 100 matches for anyone normal!) and finally got that portion of the achievement while clicking so furiously on the horde PROT WARRIOR with 45k health that I didn’t even realize I’d gotten it when I saw the flag vanish.
Woot!
Incidentally, since I don’t BG much (read: at all), I was amused to get:
300,000 damage or healing in a single BG on players. Sweet. I always thought I’d get this on Madrana, since I have been known to go in and healbot through things on very rare occasions, but nope, she doesn’t have it yet and Kurn got it tonight.
AV took me three turtles to get the achievement. I did that by miraculously getting Crusader Aura and jumping ahead to Iceblood Tower, hauling out my orphan on the way up and being the first to assult the flag by literally a second. Thank you, goodbye, /afk.
That means all I have left is the flag in EotS (uggggggh, I hate that place, but at least there are many, many flags in the course of one match) and Utgarde Pinnacle. Then I can actually finish the quests with my Draenei Orphan (already did the Human one) and then be done with this accursed holiday.
Probably doing a Naxx 25 tonight (Sunday) for fun — maybe I can actually get an upgraded ring or trinket, maybe my 7.5 chest?
Hon, I’ve been saying it for a while (though it was a general assessment, since I only saw your healing assist me on a couple of quests) but you really are that awesome. Seems to me the intensity from so much attempted progression in BC really brings out the best in people. Story time!
For the longest time, when my friend was still running the mage, they had Kara on semi-farm. They could down everyone except Nightbane and rarely had trouble with Prince. They figured if they couldn’t clear Prince and Nightbane regularly, they shouldn’t move on to Gruul or Mags. It didn’t help that they were afraid to go out-of-guild to fill the spots for Gruul/Mags, but they got so complacent with the abilities that they had used in Karazhan that when they DID go into anything else, they usually got their asses handed to them. They couldn’t figure it out, and they refused to change their style. “But our specs are fine, I was constantly overhealing the tank on Netherspite…” The typical “if it works (somewhere), don’t change it (anywhere)” mentality. The mages progressed fine, what with their two-spell rotation, but the healers would invariably screw up. My friend got into a regular raid spot for Gruul and Mags out-of-guild, and we both noticed that the healers were behaving completely differently. Hell, we actually saw a couple of Lifeblooms on the mage-tank in Gruul’s first pull. Priests would hit Prayer of Mending, rather than just constantly hit… Whatever else they use. To this day, the guild is running Naxx-10 (and maybe Ulduar-10, I haven’t talked to them recently) but they haven’t cleared Gruul, Mags, TK, SSC, BT, SWP, or Hyjal. At least, not as a guild, and not with the appropriate level/gear.
Whereas, with you, you healed (as I understand it) through every fight in TK, SSC, and (most of?) BT, and you probably had to change it up quite a bit throughout. That willingness to learn different things is probably what kept you as one of the best healers available, as opposed to the typical HOT-spam dr00d or CoH-spam priest.
Or I could be completely wrong and you could have been one of those FoL-spam healers all your life? ;)
Also, since I forgot, I hate PvP as much as you, but I really enjoy Alterac Valley. Impossible for me with my connection, though. :(
There was precious little variety in BC healing as a paladin, but no, I was never a FoL spam healer. Ever. I was weird.
I healed every raid instance in BC, through Kalecgos attempts. Kara, Gruul, Mag, SSC, TK, Hyjal, BT, Sunwell trash runs and a couple Kalecgos attempts. That… is a frigging lot of healing. >< We always worked hard to adapt our personal and group playstyles to various situations. By the end of BC, our mages were largely arcane/frost with enough haste to allow them to spam arcane blast and frostbolt such that the AB debuff would still be on while they started to cast another round of AB, so they'd get the reduced cast time but not the increased mana cost. That's just scary, though, the concept of using the same strats/etc in Kara as elsewhere in BC? I mean, sure, I had two healing buttons, but I also used Blessing of Protection, Blessing of Freedom, etc. I don't know, though, I just don't feel like I'm particularly awesome. What DOES surprise me is that some people... are not that good. What kind of priest has trouble on Thorim's tunnel? Prayer of Mending, man. That's hax and does half your work for you. I USED to enjoy AV. Quite a bit, actually. I was part of a 10 hours AV win back in the pre-BC days. It was AWESOME. Back when the field of strife really WAS a field of strife...