Healers Always Get the Blame…

So the other day I went to heal a Heroic Gun’Drak. After gearing up in Naxx, I thought “Good, a relaxing instance run…this should be cake! It’s just a heroic!” Oh boy, was I wrong.

The first pull, one of the warriors pulled aggro off of the tank, and all three mobs hit him at once. I’m not sure even a God could have saved him. By the time I realized why he was taking 70% health per second, he was dead. And by that, I mean it took me 2 seconds to realize that he was taking VASTLY more damage than the tank (usually dps doesn’t take too much, so a Holy Shock or a Flash of Light is good enough) and he was down. Ok…whatever, it’s one glitch. Then the warrior tank goes afk. So the warrior DPS starts tanking. Alright…no shield? No defense rating? No problem. Right? So that sort of failed, and one of the dps went down…but whatever. Then the tank came back, we killed the first boss, but the poison nova killed me and 2 more DPS…whatever. I mean, if the tank isn’t going to move him away from us, or get in an area where everyone isn’t LoS’ed from my heals, or the Shaman won’t drop a cleanse totem, then that’s NOT my fault.

Then things got interesting. We come back, we jump down into the water, I heal everyone up like a good healer…and the tank immediately pulls. While I have 12% mana. Not smart. Whatever, we barely make it through that pull–what the hell? You’re pulling? Again? Really? Aw, dammit, look what you’ve–huh? The DPS warrior stole aggro again? Buddy, you need to–WHY ARE YOU PULLING WHEN I HAVE NO MANA YOU STUPID–dead DPS warrior? Really? Really, sir?

So finally, I say “Are you using Vigilance on the warrior? Because he needs it.”

To which the tank replies “Don’t tell me what to do. Why don’t you do your job and I’ll do mine :)”

To which I reply “Well, you’re obviously not doing your job if you keep losing aggro and you keep pulling when I have no mana.”

To which he replies “Well you’re obviously undergeared and suck at healing.”

Then he pulls the second boss. I have to tell you, I almost bubble-hearthed out of there. But, being the kind, patient person that I am, I decided to stick around. I healed them through that fight, no problem. No one died. No one got even close. I still had 70% mana. Because I suck and can’t heal.

But honestly, I wanted to punch him. See, with Xperl, a nice UI addon that I’m in love with, not only can I see the target of my target, but I can see the target of my target’s target. And let me tell you…whenever the tank was targeting a mob, the mob was only targeting him about 2/3 of the time. THAT’S A PROBLEM! But see, whenever I had at least 25% mana, I could heal us through an entire fight no problems. Too bad healers need mana to heal. How silly of me to want my tank to give me 10 seconds to get more of it.

Then, of course, a tanking piece drops, one that I want/need. So I say “Anyone mind if I need?” And there was no response. Finally, I go “Fuck it. If he kicks me, good riddance, he’s a jackass anyway.” And they go “Why’d you need?” And I go “I asked if anyone minded, no one said anything. So it’s for my offset.”

The rest of the instance goes without incident, until the final boss. I heal the other bosses flawlessly, but Mr. Rhino who likes to impale was cruel. The first time, he completely 1-shotted a DPS. There was literaly no hope for him. Then he impaled the other DPS, who I healed through it…then he charged me. And I died because I hadn’t had a chance to heal myself. Whatever, final bosses on some heroics are still not the easiest thing in the world. So we come back, and do it again. I heal them all the way through until the boss had about 15% left…then he impales me. And I get no heals from the Shaman. None. He just lets me die. Whatever. Epic tanking gloves drop and I say “Can I need for offspec?” The DK goes “Sure.” The warrior DPS goes “IDC.” The Shaman goes “W/e, take ‘em.” The tank?

“You should roll on more healing gear.”

At this point, if I had all the powers of a GM, I would have banned his character, his account, his IP address, and his computer from WoW. Forever. First of all, no healing gear dropped the entire instance. Second, I just fucking healed your ass through that heroic and all you can think to do is be snide at me, when you didn’t even spec into fucking Vigilance and can’t hold aggro from your DPS, none of who are doing over 2.2k dps in a HEROIC?!?

/ignore

Later, however, I get messaged from someone who goes “Do you remember me?” I thought I did, but I was wrong. However, it turns out that they *liked* how I healed, even though the last time I healed them was through Heroic UtK and I was in mostly greens and panicking the entire time. She said “Yeah, I added you because of your awesome heals, wanna come to H-DtK with us?”

Let me tell you, the difference a competent tank makes is priceless. Combine that with a group of good humored people, and we finished that run before the first round of blessings expired, even though on King Dred, the fear LoS’ed me from the tank and he died and I had to heal both the Druid and the two DKs who all decided that they would tank him at the same time.

Sorry Morso, but lrn2play before you blame it on the healer. I’m not responsible for your fail-tanking. I don’t care what your 2400 gear rating says–anytime I can cast a heal and generate more threat than you, you have done something horribly, horribly wrong. A good tank is nice and understanding and respects mana costs. A good tank can help an undergeared single-target healer solo heal a fight most raid healers can’t do. GG!

I’m a Loot Ninja

So last night I got invited to a Naxx 25 group.  Naxx happens all the time. Nothing new. I come in right before Gluth. We one shot him. I use my need roll on a plate belt. I use a greed roll on some gloves. 2 pieces of loot off of one boss, and I’m feeling happy. It’s already a successful run…or so I thought. We move on. We wipe once on Thaddius, kill him, then proceed to the next quarter.  Everything seems normal, right? Nothing out of the ordinary. Until we start pulling trash.

The next 2 quarters were filled with cacophony. I have never, EVER, wiped so much on trash, yet one-shot every single other boss (except for KT, who we two-shot, which, in a PuG, isn’t bad at all.) We had some hunter Thumbus who thought it would be fun to continually Misdirect pulls onto our tank before everyone was rezzed and buffed up. Multiple times. The most fun was on the Gargoyles, where people had upwards of 20 stacks of the poison. It took us over a half-hour to kill 6 gargoyles and 10 slimes. We killed the next 2 bosses within 10 minutes of each other.

Did I mention I got loot off of both of them? Item total: 4. Bosses down: 4. Hm. Interesting.  And some of it was mail/leather/cloth too. Whatever, it’s fine, no one else needed them…

We struggle to get to Loatheb because our lock failed at running and not dpsing, thus he died. Took us about 20 minutes to do the gauntlet. One-shot Loatheb. Whatever, we’re a special group.

Then the spider quarter. This is the quarter that made me wtb Circle of Healing. Seriously, the priest was outhealing me by almost 50% of my outgoing heals. But whatever, they also are already healing Ulduar. And I was beating another pally healer and priest healer who both had better gear than me. But seriously, between Poison Bitch and Loatheb, I was pretty jealous.

Oh yeah, more pretty gear for me. Thanks Sinister. Total new gear pieces: 6. Bosses down: 8

One shot Sapphiron. How the hell did we wipe on fucking GARGOYLES but one shot Sapph, when NO ONE had frost resistance gear? And only one death by a shaman who got ON NOM NOMed at the very beginning because he stood in front of the claws of doom. While standing in a Blizzard. Smart.

At this point, I don’t even remember if I got loot from him or not. I think I did. We two-shot KT, but I got nothing. Do I care? No. Final tally: 7 pieces of gear, 10 bosses. Do I feel like a loot whore/ninja? Yes. Am I thankful to Sinister? Indefinitely. My spellpower went up by over 100 and I definitely got an extra 5% crit, if not more.

Not to mention I am no longer wearing more cloth/leather/mail than plate. In fact, I think I only have to replace wrist binders (cloth) and I’ll be in all mail or plate. Therefore not as squishy as before. Plus, I now have tons of badges, and can buy more gear if I need it. Perhaps I’ll start trying to get tier pieces…

Until then, “I R PALADIN! I CAN HAZ ANY ARMOR!” Screw you DKs/Huntards.

P.S. Did I mention that this was for main-spec gear only? I don’t even want to talk about the new pieces of off-spec gear, including the fact that I wasted a 95 roll when the RL said “roll for greed” and didn’t specificy that it was for main-spec greed. Oh well. I wasn’t going to complain. Even though I REALLY wanted to.

Joo Can Haz No Mana! Die Now Pl0x!

Imagine Naxx 25. Most of us have done it/despise it/love it. I was in a run with Dark Guard, another guild that houses many of my WoW friends (Zephoes, who was a pet tank/healbot for a while, and Chestter,  who was in Rising Phoenix with me, both of whom I have known for over a year, Chestter ).  We glide though with ease the first night, with my only complaint being they didn’t explain loot rules after the first boss I was there to kill (Loatheb) and passed up a chance to win an upgrade for my helm. But whatever, I’m sure I’ll be back–it was an accident and nothing more.  It wasn’t my ideal helm anyway, just an epic to replace a blue (achievement wut?)

Then we hit Thaddius. And someone mentions that Thaddius is the Achille’s Heel for Dark Guard. I’m thinking “We’ve all seen this boss before…Mechanar, hello?” And I’m sure there were other bosses like this.  And it’s easy: don’t be an idiot, move when your charge changes. Right? Right? …Wrong. The first time, healers just…didn’t heal their tanks. And a tank died. So we had to reset. The second time?

Let me put it this way: I thought Failbot was going to explode. The first time we made it to Thaddius, we lost about 6 dps within the first charge switch, from people who didn’t make the jump and didn’t know how to re-enter the fight to people who just couldn’t switch.

After a couple more attempts, we gave up and called it a night.  Because some people had failed many, many times. We’re talking double digits here. People, when your charge switches, the most important thing you can do is move. You do not finish casting/channeling your spell. You do not keep attacking to try to make the most of your CDs. You do not pass Go. You do not collect $200. Or I will cut your face off.

So  last night we went back. We ‘re on Thaddius, of course. Everything is going fine. We dps down the minions. We jump. I stand in the center. I realize that I blew through a decent amount of mana, so I think “Why not use Evocation? Then it’ll be ready for use later on!”

So I pop Evocation. The boss comes alive. I’m still Evocating.

In about 1.5 seconds, my screen flashes “AGGRO!” then BOOM 24351 damage hit. I’m dead. It’s not worth even mentioning the overkill.

I stared at my screen, dumbfounded. How could I possibly forget that Evocation causes more aggro than the Consecration + Taunt that the pally tank cast as soon as Thaddius came alive? How could I possibly think that Evocation, a spell that is already broken and easily interruptable, would actually allow me to successfully regain my mana? How could I possibly imagine Thaddius being so curteous and kind as to allow my pitiful clothie self a chance to even survive his glare?

Lesson Learned: Evocate before jumping so you don’t cause aggro and don’t suffer from the AoE and thus have no mana (and, therefore, no dps) or else you will die (and, therefore, have no dps).