Heroic AN is still a headache without poison cleanse

About six months ago I posed the question to the WoW forums asking whether or not Blizzard will ever add more gear to be purchased with Emblems of Heroism. I don’t raid because of time constraints, but was logging on nightly to do a heroic or two with a steady group of friends. After having every possible emblem upgrade, and plenty of heirloom items for alts, I began losing interest in playing my character because I was out of upgrades. I enjoyed running heroics but there wasn’t much of an incentive from a progression standpoint.

My forum thread was full of players saying that it was doubtful because Blizzard doesn’t want a repeat of the latter stages of Burning Crusade, where Hiijal/SSC-geared players were forced to slum heroics for gear upgrades. I was discouraged and eventually wound up leaving my priest alone to level alts.

Fast-forward to now: Blizzard made Emblems of Conquest drop from heroic dungeon bosses, and Emblems of Triumph are now the reward for completing the daily heroic quest. Beautiful! They’ve given my priest room to progress!

I logged on last night hoping to find a group for The Headless Horseman. He drops a ring that is an upgrade to one of my holy spec rings, and I enjoy the fact that the seasonal bosses are quick and don’t require hours of time. It appeared as though my guild had already killed him, so I hiked to Scarlet Monastery figuring that there’s bound to be a group spamming General chat for a healer.

I kind of just stood in the lobby of SM, toying with the level 31 mobs. Fifteen minutes went by and I saw no promising groups that were looking for a healer. One group did need a healer, but I was turned off by their message: LF 1 more, healer, must have summon and must summon first!” No thanks. I’ve been burned too many times in this game to roll the dice with that situation.

There was a group in the LFG channel that needed a healer for heroic Azjol-Nerub, the daily heroic dungeon. I was hesitant to volunteer because my 3-month-old daughter had just fallen asleep next to me and could wake up at any time, but I took a chance. The group sent me an invite and I headed to Star’s Rest.

The group composition was solid: A paladin tank, a warrior, a death knight, and a mage. The melee would compliment each other well, and the mage provides water, intellect, and possibly Replenishment. The tank had 38k health, which is always nice to see as a healer.

Upon entering the instance it was evident that the tank was in a rush. I had to hurry and eat for food buffs, and he started the first pull while I was out of range and only a half bar of mana. Call me old school – I know that at this stage of the game just about every level 80 player can out-gear heroics with a trip to the auction house, but I hate taking heroics for granted and wasting time running back to corpses because we’re caught off guard.

During the pull right before the first boss, the mage pulled aggo from an add, and died. As I was resurrecting him the tank pulled the boss, which interrupted my rez. The tank, once again, lost control over an add and it skittered over and killed me. Thankfully the graveyard is a short run from the instance and we were both able to make it back to the boss before the tank died.

The remainder of the run was fairly smooth. The second boss seemed to take forever to kill. I had to use Shadowfiend, a mana potion, and Hymn of Hope. I checked Recount and the dps was doing 3200, 1800, and 1350 dps, which didn’t seem extremely low for a heroic.

The final boss is an annoyance for one reason, poison. In fact, that is the problem with the entire instance for a priest healer. We’re the only healing class that cannot cleanse poison. So when Anub’arak’s adds are spitting acid that ticks for 3,500 hp every few seconds on two different players, instead of dispelling it, we have to watch it tick down and heal through it. Again, at this stage of the expansion, it’s nothing more than a moderate annoyance, but it made the fight interesting.

He dropped the wand and, since it was a side-grade to my wand, I passed so the mage could have it.

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Coolest Looking Boss I’ve Ever Seen!

I just saw a screen shot of one of the Icecrown Citadel bosses, Festergut. He’s considered an abomination, and rightfully so. I’ve never seen a boss model that’s more repulsive than this handsome devil. Keep up the good work, Blizzard.

Love the rat face coming out of his head

Love the little rat face coming out of his head above his left shoulder

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The Midsummer Fire Festival and Me Not Caring

I really, really wish that I could get more into these achievements, and in turn, the seasonal events. But the truth is, as it stands, I couldn’t care less. It surprises me because I enjoy the lore and the fantasy aspect of the game. I just haven’t found an incentive to knock out the seasonal quests.

Now we’re enjoying the Midsummer Fire Festival, which offers a few daily quests, a boatload of achievements, and a crack and defeating the boss Ahune who is located in Slave Pens.

One of the things that did manage to get me involved in some of the events last year was the chance at epic loot that drops from bosses such as Ahune and The Headless Horseman (during the Hallows End season). The problem is, for some reason they left Ahune at level 70 which means we’re stuck with level 70 loot. So much for my incentive.

I wonder why they didn’t upgrade him for level 80. I would definitely log on each night to use my summon on him if it meant a chance at an iLevel 200 cloak or ring.

Anyway, I did find two quick and easy daily quests that pay 13g a piece that can be done from any capital city, but besides that, Midsummer Fire Festival is another event that I probably won’t bother with.

What are your feelings on these events? Do you get involved? If not, what could Blizzard do to entice you to participate?

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I Hate Healing Meters

I’ll lead this post off by saying: I acknowledge the fact that I have not pressed ‘end-game content’, as the forum nerds refer to it. With that said, healing meters are a dumb way to measure the value of healers.

  1. Raid healing and tank healing are completely seperate types of healing. The tank is constantly taking damage, the raid may not be taking damage. The potential amount of healing a raid healer can do depends on the encounter itself, and how smart/reactive the raid is to get out of trouble. If the raid moves fast and can avoid extra AoE damage, that’s less damage raid healers have to heal. If raid healers heal less, they show up lower on the meters.
  2. Especially in the case of Disc priests, there’s really isn’t a way to calculate the value of things like absorption from shields, Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, etc. Maybe the Disc priest didn’t top meters, but he laid a crucial PS+PW:S that kept the tank from dying and the raid from wiping.
  3. You’re working for a common goal. You’re supposed to be competing against the mobs in front of you, not one another. Healing meters seem to promote players spamming their big AoE heals in order to top the healer next to them, instead of the more mana-efficient/appropriate spell for that particular situation.

I get it. When you’re pressing new raids and every little bit counts, you’d like a way to measure the effectivness of one healer over another. But the better way to do that is this: Assign roles to your healers and if the healer can fullfill their role and the players their responsible for DON’T DIE, then they did fine. If the players their responsible for DID die then figure out why. Were they standing in fire? Was the healer out of position, not managing their mana? Go from there.

WoW has so many variables that you can’t say: “Ok, Zejus had only 29% of the healing while Banjos has 37% and Eriak had 34% of the healing. Since we wiped, it must be because Zejus isn’t pulling his load.” It doesn’t work that way. If Zejus was tank healing and the tank didn’t die, but Banjos was raid healing and 4 dps died which led to slow killing and Zejus OOM’ing then your problem is elsewhere regardless of what the meters say.

I think healing meters are stupid and if my wife divorced me and I was able to raid and was recruited by a guild who is THAT serious that I’d be removed if we wipe and my healing percentage was lower than the rest I’d leave that guild immediately.

Before anything else, WoW is a game. It’s meant to be fun. If your guild is wiping on a particular boss but you’re on Vent with good players, and friends, you make it work. You stick with it and figure it out. Kicking people just so that you can brag on the forums about your fake purple epics does not impress me.

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