Vuhdo Viewings and Guild Firsts

I have been meaning to post some screenies of vuhdo ever since I first posted about making the switch from Healbot over a month ago...

Well, a lot has happened since then but I now, finally, have gotten around to uploading some. Rather than just bore you with a bunch of random shots or walls of text about what I have been up to, I figured I would let the screenies tell the story and, as a picture is worth a thousand words, do both at once :)

I love how I can separate toons out by role in Vuhdo. We don't use 7 healers for Saurfang as it shows here, but once I assign healers to that role, it doesn't always switch them when they go DPS for a specific fight. You can change the max number of toons per group- I went with 8 as that is what currently fits in my available screen real estate and still allows me to see my character. (1st wing of ICC cleared 25man woot!)

Here you can see some of the HoT icons still up. Each HoT is assigned a different part of the bar to show up on, I have my HoTs set to show up as squares (numbers inside the square indicate time remaining on the HoT), and living seed procs to show as a circle. Debuffs and such have a little fly-in type animation for quick identification for removal, and my stacking HoT (Life Bloom) shows white (1 stack), yellow, or green (2 stacks and full stacked respectively). This set up really adds to my situational knowledge and helps me make faster decisions on which heal to throw next. (Rotface, and Festergut (not pictured) down 10man style)

And I shall leave you with this... (10 man) Blood Princes down! Gratz to all involved in this guild first kill. Forget the Blood Queen, I want to heal me a big green dragon next!

Gear Score Lamentations

Yes this is another gear score rant. Like so many others out there, Svenn decries gear score as one of the pervading evils of our time. His reasoning however, differs some from the main complaints- it doesn’t tell you if they can play or not, if they are specced/ gemmed wrong, etc. Those are all true, but that is not what Svenn has a problem with.

In a time before gear score, Svenn assumed that if he performed poorly on the meters he needed more gear. Likewise, he assumed as much of others as well. Occasionally he would inspect other toons to see just what their gear was like to help explain an especially bad performance, but by and large, he too accepted that performance was a function of gear.
Gear score shatters that illusion. There is no way to hide from the little popup box with numbers, be they Red, Orange, Purple, or Blue. Sure Svenn could uninstall the addon, but others would still run it, others who may not be as considerate in their feedback.

The true tragedy is not the mindless “LFM Uld10 must have 5k gear score” spam (though it is completely stupid). No, it lies in the good players who manage their way into a raid with a low gear score, outperform everyone else there relative to their gear score, yet get no recognition. It lies in the quantification of a toon’s worth based on a sum of items assigned values arbitrarily according to lvl. It lies in the loss of innocence we once had, and assigning everyone the benefit of the doubt. That being said…

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Mr. Awesome DK lolz Tank,
Thanks for bailing on my group because the gear scores were to low. I would have been the best heals you ever had. The 3.5k gearscore hunter in some ToC/craftable epics and quest blues (Hanka) does ~3K DPS! We finished the run in 16minutes with the next tank in the que. Everyone to include the healer (me) did over 1.5K DPS. I hope your next run went smoothly and took less than a 60 seconds, considering your 15 minute deserter debuff.

With Bubbles and Renews,
Ottar

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Penance is for DPSing and last minute saves when I tab back in from /4chan. Silly tank :)

RetTreeDiscadin wah!?

As many of you may have noticed, there has been a distinct slow down on posts here at The Misadventures. Svenn has talked of “burnout” and general apathy he has been feeling towards WoW for awhile now; the constant Heroics grind for badges, the “free” epics which just don’t seem to help some people improve, etc. … None of these ominous reasons (often associated with leaving WoW all together) are to blame for the dearth of posts in recent weeks. In fact the lack of posts is a GOOD thing. Previously, daily postings were fun, because the game simply wasn’t. As Svenn was not having much fun playing WoW, posting about it became more fun than actually playing.

Svenn has found the fun again…as a healer!?! No, Svenn himself does not heal, he is solidly entrenched in the Prot/Ret duality of his life, rather, 2 of his other toons have emerged as favorites. As he has alluded to previously, the tree (Knutsen) has been seeing some significant action healing for a friend’s guild…in 25 mans! Never having raided 20/40 mans in Vanilla/BC, this is an entirely new and exciting experience. They were kind enough to break him in gently on a ToC25 run last week and an Ony25 run earlier this week before jumping into ICC25 last night. And, while probably not all that exciting, Knutsen solo healed a weekly 10 man raid run (Patchwerk) with only 9 in the group, all but 1 or 2 alts, and the “OT/ cleave eater” being a DPS DK converted for the fight to “tank”. It was good fun, and as much of a healing workout as any of the 25 man raids.(Thanks to FIST for believing in me enough to let this recently converted tank try solo healing a raid, even if it was just Patches! :)

The other healer is a bit more surprising. Ottar, Svenn’s first real healer and the toon that first earned him the title “The Grumpy Healer”, has made a reappearance in Heroics. With a conversion to Disc, he is now merrily healing his way to DPS gear. Unlike Knutsen, Ottar can bring the pain while healing, maintaining around 1-1.5k DPS comfortably without slacking on the heals (Note: some tips from Vidalya helped Knutsen DPS while healing too, he’s just not quite as effective at it as Ottar yet). While all the badges are being spent on DPS gear, the incredibly low hit cap for Spriest’s is ideal for multifunctional gear to serve as both Disc and DPS sets.

Some say, “Wow that’s a lot of switching back and forth, ala EmberIsolte’s Altoholic”, but that is yet another source of fun. Trying to keep various classes and spec’s straight and perform well in the marquee positions of tank or heals, puts an element of challenge back into the game. That Svenn is no longer pigeonholed into tanking every run has greatly increased the fun factor. Hopefully, that is a good enough reason to cut back on posts again. Don’t worry though, I haven’t forgotten about the next installment of the Holiday Parody Series, it’s just taking a bit longer for inspiration to strike than normal.

Off Night Activities

Saturday night Svenn tried out his new healing spec in Heroic UK. It quickly became apparent that he needed much more practice healing, as well as some better gear (mostly to compensate for being a rookie healer). Bluechicken tanked the run, and Hanka (Grayce's hunter), Emma, and Raenbow DPSed.

The run itself went fairly quickly, but I often got behind on healing and wound up letting someone die before the end of each fight (sorry Raen). We had one wipe on the second boss and several other random deaths on trash leading up to the final boss. That was enough to convince me that I was not ready yet (the few epics Svenn had picked up from Naxx and the Firestrider Chestguard from Ulduar were not enough to make up for the crummy blue quest rewards that made up the bulk of his gear). Raen turned tree for the last boss and helped out with the healing; we were able to finish the run without incident.

To help close the equipment gap Svenn cranked out some Argent Crusade dailies and hit exalted with the faction. This allowed him to purchase the Helm of Purified Thoughts and the Signet of Hopeful Light. Once again Grayce was kind enough to let Svenn avail himself of her jewel crafting skills to fill the open slots on the helm as well as some other healing gear which had been sitting empty. Combined with inscriptions, spell thread, and some enchant vellums from Ottar, Svenn is far more prepared for his next holy outing, and far poorer too.

More Misadventures in VH

Last night saw Svenn tanking Heroic Violet Hold once again. This run however, was a bit different. The group filled quickly enough (after all, it wasn't a raid night); Corday brought her Rogue (Emmapeel), Innoonfire (Blue Chicken), and Saiff filled out the DPS cadre, but there was nary a healer in sight.

Enter Yallenna, Grayce's Holy Pally. Grayce had never healed heroic on Yallenna, in fact had never been in a Northrend instance at all with her. She had leveled her to 80 with the intention of healing with her, but had put her on the shelf in favor of the freeze your face off DPS of Grayce. She had decent gear; craftable epics and blues mainly, as well as some enchants and jems, so she was within the 1.5k recommended spell power range for heroics. As Yallenna frantically set up her Healbot while the group assembled, Svenn and other guildies assured her she would be fine. She was more than fine, she was exceptional.

The fast paced nature of VH was a bit of a challenge for her mana regen, but there was plenty of mage food, and the steady DPS output ensured that there was time to enjoy it between portal openings. The whole run went very smoothly, and no one went down until the very end with Cyanigosa's fate already sealed.

Her heals were spot on, her timing great, and the extra set of pally buffs were a nice addition to the stack. It was enjoyable to be running something with her again (Cromm had leveled to 70 with Yallenna, pre-Wrath). I think Svenn found his pocket healer at last - and she disenchants to boot!

Going Holy?

Last night Svenn did something a little crazy. Between raid encounters, (I subbed out with Blue Chicken for the Gothik fight) Svenn paid the pally trainer in IF a little visit. He changed his off spec to holy; no, he wont be giving up Prot anytime soon. He had been toying with the idea for some time, quietly building up a nice set of healy type gear through various plate caster drops no one else wanted/ could use.

I was fortunate enough to get to try it out almost immediately, as Svenn was called back to Naxx for the 4 Horsemen encounter. As per usual, he was sent to the back corner to tank/heal him-self while switching back and forth with Feyavalon. In the past he had always done the back in Ret, and had very little problems. In Holy spec, it was even easier and I even managed to fire off a few insta-heals on Fey during the switches.

I don't think that Svenn will stay Holy as an off spec, but it is fun for now and nice to know he can be a viable healer if the raid group needs one.

Ottar heals VH

Last night the regular Violet Hold, which we had been trying to orchestrate for 3 days now finally happened. Ottar activated Holy Spec and headed into VH for a run with some other Alts from the guild. He has healed some of the lower level Northrend instance before, but usually had 3 or 4 level 80s to help out. This time was not much different in that respect, Shaka was kind enough to tank for us on the DK, and the ever fabulous Grayce brought AoE frost damage (both level 80s). Corday and Blue Chicken both had alts that needed it and brought a Rogue and Mage respectively.

What was different was the pace of the encounter, with portals opening at set intervals whether you are ready or not. Mana regen was an issue for me early on, luckly I had stacks of mana pies from the 2 mages and was able to eat on the go without the worry of burning up too many consumables. As the fight wore on Ottar became better about mana conservation and OOM was less of an issue.

We did have a death at the first boss. Moragg took an immediate shine to Emma (Corday's Rogue) and soul linked her every chance he got- talk about a fatal attraction, yipes! I couldn't keep up on the spike damage from SL unfortunately, but we dropped him with plenty of time for a rez before the next portal opened.

From there, things went smoothly. The second boss, Xevozz, tossed around arcane damage like beads at a Marti-Gras parade, but the group downed him so fast that keeping up with AoE heals wasn't a problem. We closed down the rest of the portals and waited for Cyanigosa to make her appearance.

She too went down without to much of a struggle. I had some problems with positioning after each Arcane Grip, and as such fell behind in healing. With that particular spell, Cyanigos pulls everyone under her and wipes aggro. The aggro wipe wasn't a problem (Shaka did a great job regaining it quickly), but I had to stop healing each time to reposition and found myself on the opposite side of the dragon from the ranged DPS more than once. This meant that my Circle of Healing/ Prayer of Healing were sometimes out of range of the casters. To fix this problem for next time I think I will hit a Holy Nova and a Circle of Healing before repositioning. This should top off the group's health as well as allow me to determine which way to run, so I can stay in range of the casters.

Ottar picked up the Band of Eyes, some pantaloons, as well as 42k XP from turning in the quest. I also learned a bit more about healing and will hopefully be ready for Heroics when I hit 80.