Zul Aman: New Content!

So in the past couple of weeks, I have been to ZA twice. My guild is doing that every Thursday now, and progression in the two times I've been has been pretty goddamn impressive. Last Thursday we hit the Bear Aspect first and got him down in time for the timed loot. We wiped on the Eagle dude though and had to try him again (I forget if we needed 3 tries or just the second). We wiped several times on the Lynx Aspect and decided we just didn't have an ideal party (something about needing a hunter; I honestly don't know the intricacies of what the hunter's role is in the fight is; I just heal people).

Last night's run was awesome! Shawn was leading the raid, and decided we'd hit the Eagle Aspect first. If you asked me what a perfect raid boss fight looked like, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a better example of our guild executing a boss fight perfectly, especially at this level of content. The best part was, dude dropped a new healing chest piece for my paladin. I'm still unsure if it's something that's really worth using. It's got 2 more gem slots than my badge-bought chest, about 10 less healing, and 15 mana per 5 instead of 40 something spell crit. If I stick 3 Teardrop Crimson Spinels into the thing, I'll gain about 30 healing, but lose about 2% spell crit. That's a hard sell for a paladin. Also, the stam and int aren't as good on it. So I'm undecided as to whether it's worth obtaining 3 epic gems for.

As we proceded on, we wiped once on the bear aspect, disqualifying us from the timer loot. But we mopped the floor with him on the second try. He dropped the same leather dps belt he dropped last week, but it made someone new happy.

We then moved on to the dragonhawk aspect, which was a boss I'd never seen, and our guild had never succeeded against. It's a tricky fight because there're eggs that hatch non-elite 70 adds and periodic issues with globes of fire that appear on the battlefield and then explode. Your goal is to avoid the explodey, and then go right back to whaling on the boss. Of course, if you're a healer, needing to move is a pain in the ass because it means you have to stop healing the party. It was different from Karazhan, where all I do in every fight is stand in one spot and pound my flash of light hotkey while clicking on different portraits as the life-bars fluctuate. When we finally got him, on the third try, I felt really good about myself. We lost two people on that one-the main pally tank and I think our squishy mage (could've been someone else, but if I have to arbitrarily pick a guild member to be on her ass at the end of a boss fight-or even a trash mob pull-it'd be Polly's mage).

One thing that did kind of annoy me was the player of the Pally tank (whose irl name I actually don't know) counting down the percentages of the boss after he was at about 20%. I knew he meant it to be encouraging, but if there's a way to disrupt the rhythm of a raid, it's bringing to the forefront of the raiders' minds that the ordeal is almost over. The light at the end of the tunnel is a dangerous thing; you can't let yourself relax until the fucker is dead. I compared this to jinxing a no-hitter by discussing it while it's in progress, and someone in the channel commented that the analogy was very nicely put. Of course, I can't hold it against him; we did down the boss, after all. Heh.

Finally, we moved on to the Lynx aspect; the boss that was actually our main goal for the night. Our objective, as outlined by our fearless leader, guild-master Pete, was to down the third boss. It was a modest goal, progression-wise, to get another boss down in a week. Of course, we were on a roll. We'd killed 3 bosses, and were moving on to the 4th, who we one-shotted. That was another excellently-executed fight. I was really in a groove with my healing. That lynx boss is a heavy hitter, but we had priest, druid, and paladin heals, and each of the healers were on during that fight. I got into that groove where I'm pounding my 5 key (flash of light) as fast as I can and clicking on individual portraits as each flash charges so I can target the next one. In this way I can keep 2 or even 3 toons topped off relatively reliably, as long as heavy heals aren't required. It's also a tricky groove to get into. When I do, it's sort of like time slows a bit and my reactions are just faster. Obviously that's bullshit, but that's what it feels like.

That's the sort of groove I was in when I kept 3 or 4 guildies alive single-handedly in Icewing Bunker when we were holding off the horde for several minutes. This is the incident that caused my buddy Jeremy, whose warrior I christened as a 'mobile consecrate,' to launch a love-fest in his blog for me. A glorious love-fest that lasted all of one entry. But hey, that entry was mine, god dammit. Heh.

Anyway, after dominating the lynx boss, we decided to clear to the fifth boss, the Hex-Lord. He was an interesting fight. He has 4 henchmen that you basically need to crowd control while you kill him. In a way, it seems like the inverse of the Moroes fight in Karazhan where you try to pick off his help as fast as you can before isolating and killing him. This guy has a shadowbolt volley that mows everyone down. It's insane to heal for. It's channeled, seems to be uninterruptable, and goes on for long enough to put a hurting on the entire raid. And he does it frequently. It's not something that happens once every few minutes. We wiped fairly shortly, but we did see the encounter, and that was fun.

We all left extremely satisfied with the way the raid went. I had a great time. I always enjoy raiding with my guild. It's a fun group of people.

And finally, a brief AV story, since this is kind of a pvp blog. Earlier in the week I entered an AV where I led a Balinda defense effort where we repelled the initial wave of Horde, and then moved on to bunker defense. I got to Stonehearth just in time to watch it burn and then die. I made my way after rezzing to Icewing and got it back. I then waded out into a melee outside and simply tossed heals around for a while. The Alliance got off to a very smooth start. We were ahead. But then the horde started closing the gap. Eventually both sides had most of the other side's infrastructure gone, and reinforcements were becoming an issue. The alliance side even summoned Ivus! The Horde though, coordinated to the very last, managed to get in on Vann while the Alliance was celebrating prematurely and dinking around with the giant treefolk. One. Fucking. Reinforcement. Yes, they snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. I applauded them for it. It was a fantastic recovery on their part, and it sucked to be on the other side of. But I felt good about my role in it. I was active the entire time, and I was in healing Vann at the end trying to make it last just a little longer. We lost seconds after I died. Oh well.

So this week, since I'm back home house-sitting for my parents, I was able to raid both Tuesday and Thursday. My guild's raids are starting to become really random luck-of-the-draw types of things again because of the high amount of new 70's we've got with us. Some of them are actually played by fresh players (as opposed to the same people with new toons) as well. It was strange having to actually try on Maiden. It was strange to find the trash mobs actually challenging.

I had fun with it. It was fun to experience Karazhan where I had to be on top of my game for reasons other than saving face in front of the Kara-jaded veterans in my guild. There's a portion of people who have run it so many times they're sick of it and won't do it any more, and there's a much larger portion who just approach it as duty (seemingly). Many of those types have chosen to cope with it by leveling alts to 70. Often multiple times.

I guess the point I'm trying to make, rather than sounding accusatory, is that my experience with raiding Karazhan has gone from being carried by the experienced types to feeling merely competent but still ultimately expendable.

This week I felt crucial. Especially last night. Last night I was definitely the primary healer. Tuesday I shared the duty with a druid who's sort of my rival in the healing department. It was nice to feel like I was needed for my skill and not just because "we need another healer" or "we have an open slot." It was fun to feel like I was one of the people carrying the raid.

My Warlock is 63. I'm quickly approaching the day where I will enter Karazhan for the first time as a DPS and have to start raiding with my thinking cap on. Healing is easy; you don't really need to watch your threat at all because if everyone else is doing their jobs right, it won't matter (and even if they're not, it's not like you can stop healing).

As a side-note, people who drop from raid groups 30 minutes before the end of the raid are usually punished (justly so) by having gear they sorely need drop off the boss they skipped. That always kind of annoys me. Especially when we wind up having to blow those pieces up. I mean, if you get added to a raid at the last minute, unless you're the same class as the person you're replacing, you're kind of wasting your time. You know that Fate is just going to screw your predecessor over by dropping the gear karma dictates it should. So you're kind of just setting yourself up for disappointment.

I'm looking forward to being carried again, and also to experiencing a different side of raiding.

Alterac Insanity

So tonight I was in an AV that took nearly an hour. We wound up winning via reinforcements because they turtled after someone capped IBGY.

It was pretty epic. I was in the midst of things for most of the battle. We denied them nearly everything with some excellent defense. Eventually we summoned Ivus, which was a really cool thing to see.

At the end we got 546 honor (not the highest I've seen, but definitely above average) and I had 152 honorable kills and 630,000 healing.

Insane. Also a lot of fun.

Theories about BG healing... especially AV...

So I've been pvping for a while, and I'm starting to develop actual tactical skill. See, healing is basically just having a proficiency at button-mashing and mouse-clicking. Once your gear is average, the only thing that will set you aside from the other healers is how you apply your toon to the battleground.

Last night everything sort of crystallized for me. Standard operating procedure used to be to make sure Galv went down and then sit on a tower. Doing that is boring. I don't feel any different or more useful than the next guy when I do that.

I think the true way to make yourself an asset to your side, especially as a healer, is to play defense. The best place to defend is in the Stonehearth/Balinda/Icewing area, if you're looking for maximum effect. I've tried defending Dun Baldar, and usually you're either wasting your time doing nothing or one man facing tens of horde.

Your healing number in Alterac Valley isn't really a gauge of who has the best gear. What it really means is who was healing actively for the most time. That's the crucial part there. While in the AV from which I took a screenshot and gushed about in my previous entry, I spent the merest fraction of time out of combat. As a healer your job is to find combat and mitigate losses to your side. Not to simply sit on your ass defending a tower and being ready to heal. I've also noticed that in the fights like Galv and Drek, there're usually enough healers there that my presence or absence is unlikely to change the outcome of the fight. Following the zerg guarantees that you are not a special or unique snowflake.

It's easy to get bored healing if all you do is heal the galv fight, repel a token effort by 3 hordlings to take back Tower Point, and then rush to Drek to do some more incidental healing.

My new strategy in Alterac Valley is to defend Balinda and try to keep Stonehearth and Icewing Bunkers from capping. You're guaranteed a good time and more action than you can shake a Merciless Gladiator's Salvation at. And the best part is you will actually feel like you made a difference.

Epic healing in AV

So I decided I needed to have a WoW blog too.

I decided this because I've realized I really do kick ass at PvP. I will mostly be bragging about how awesome I am in battlegrounds here, because I seem to suck at arenas. And when I say battlegrounds, I mean Alterac Valley, because the other ones are just difficult.

Between the hours of 3am and now I ran AVs. I met a hunter from our server who I ran with from 4am onwards. We won a couple games doing the standard rush Galv and then hit TP routine. Then I got sick of it. Things needed to be shaked up a bit. I proposed in BG chat that we defend Balinda. I've realized that if I tell people I'm a healer, they will come and do damage. I heal them, they kill things, Balinda lives, we win. It's a beautiful thing. Especially since it was usually warlocks, hunters, mages, and druids there with me.

The AV that inspired this blog, though, was special. I led another effort to save Balinda. There were six or seven of us there at the outset. We repelled the initial assault easily. Another wave came, and defenders started to die. As defenders die, they tend to drift off toward other pursuits. Eventually it was me, my new hunter buddy, and a warlock. We're standing out front killing stragglers and suddenly a wave of horde come around the side. At least 4. We finished off the straggler we were currently occupied with and backpedalled back into the bunker. The hunter died, which was unfortunate, but seemingly inevitable. So there I am healing this lock like there's no tomorrow. I saw a 3300 holy shock crit on him at one point. We repelled a couple small waves of attackers just by ourselves. Eventually we were both killed, but not before I had reached the 250k healing mark!

I rezzed at Stormpike GY and then rode back towards Stonehearth and Icewing, where I encountered a swirling melee at the crest of the hill. Apparently, some enterprising hero had capped Iceblood Graveyard, so the horde kept about half their people in a turtle, and were trying to send the other half forward. They were under 100 reinforcements by this point, so we basically established a chokepoint at Icewing. I kept healing until I ran out of mana, at which point I rezzed at Snowfall. So I noticed as I was riding back that they horde had Stonehearth Graveyard, and that was why there was a never-ending supply of the bastards flowing towards Icewing. So I started taking out the guards there, and noticed that a mage was helping me. We both got killed by resurrecting hordies. So we both rezz, and I ask him if he wants to try it again. We charge back and kill the guards and a single hordie as the rest horde reinforcements trickled away. I was about 2 seconds from getting the graveyard capped when the battle ended.

I had 368,000 healing. Easily a personal best. I felt like I carried that AV on my shoulders. I realized that's an unrealistic and possibly arrogant thing to think, but I know my healing stymied the horde at Balinda, Icewing Bunker, and parts in between. I wasn't completely ineffectual in combat either; I had 9 killing blows and was credited with nearly 90 HKs. I haven't ever broken 100 HKs on Tanthius. I think this may have been a personal high for me on HKs as well.

Simply put, I felt like an MVP. AVs went very well. I only lost 1 in about 5 hours of play. That's definitely solid. I ground out about 7000 honor. I love AV weekends.