The GEB Pattern

I like to follow a few WOW blogs outside my own network of gaming friends. Most blogs are centered around a particular class and usually involve an individual part of the game. There's raiding blogs, tanking blogs, healing blogs, melee DPS blogs, range DPS blogs, and just about any other individual aspect of the game you can think of. Heck, even my own blog here largely reflects on my guild's raids, gear that dropped (usually the healy type gear), and maybe some achievement I managed to devote a little time to. But anyway, there's other blogs that focus on the writer's game experience in general and it's those that I want to bring up.

Lately the Game Experience Bloggers (GEBs for short) are those that have done pretty much all they have wanted to do in the game. Notice I said what they wanted to do and NOT what there is to do. GEBs usually do what the average person does in WOW. A heroic here, a raid there, or maybe roll an alt just to see what color of green that grass is. Unfortunately GEBs do such a variety of things that once there isn't any more variety in their opinion, they're done till the next expansion pack. So now I'm seeing alot of these blogs with posts titling, "How I will miss thee WOW" or "See you in the summer". This was a pattern alot of people saw back in the winding days of The Burning Crusade and somewhat in Classic WOW. And GEBs are usually the first to start this pattern since they have no one deep interest in the game.

I'm a GEB of sorts and I will admit I have felt a little of the burn. A couple of months ago I thought I would strive really hard for some achievements. Maybe grind out some rep for a particular mount. But now, not so much. Now I just want to raid, work on building the bank fund for Cataclysm and finish leveling at least one more alt for their professions. Having 3 level 80 alts with maxed professions would be a nice income for Bacon when she travels into the new expansion. But back to the topic at hand. I have had a little drudgery with the game, but I'm far from calling it burnout. There's still the Lich King to finish off as well as the quests for Icecrown and Sholazar Basin (yes I've never finished questing in those zones).

But now that the GEBs have started to "throw in the towel" on WoTLK, it's only a matter of time for others to do the same.

Standbye means Go Time

Last night I was listed as a standbye for the first night of the ICC raid. I wasn't expecting to go, but I repaired picked up some flasks in case I was going. As the raid time approached and passed, it came apparent that the standbyes were needed. Our resto shaman has been MIA for a week now and no one really knows what's going on there. As we made our push to Marrowgar, the raid leader informed the raid that those of us who were standbyes would only run till the accepted raiders showed up. I was cool with it just as long as I'm doing something with the raid. I don't take a standbye assignment with any ill feelings. I fully understand that there's a need to get exposure to other people so those roles could be filled with absences.

It ended up that I was used for the whole evening and we cleared up through Festergut. So tonight we'll take down Rotface and the Professor before venturing over to the Princes. While there wasn't anything that I needed from the drops, I did take some left overs to build up my balance set. Icecrown Spire Sandals and Abracadaver both give me 147 hit which I don't need at the moment, but that means I can free up some gem sockets for more spellpower and crit (which I DO need). The problem with off spec drops like this means us hybrids just have to spend that much more gold for enchants and gems on a set that we MAY use when needed. And while I like staves, I hate how much the spellpower enchant costs for it.

The interview

Sorry, I was out of the office (and the game) Friday interviewing with American Standard. It was an affair that took all day and left me exhausted and completely empty. I gave it all I had (Thursday’s dinner, Friday’s breakfast, and anything else that my body think it didn’t need any more). I will say, that’s the roughest way to drop 5 pounds in one day. I want to thank my son and all the other infected kids at his elementary school for the lovely stomach bug that made this interview possible.

P.S. While American Standard took everything I had to offer, the interview didn’t go anywhere but down. The good news is that Friday was my 3 year anniversary here at work and I’m back to start another. It took me nearly all weekend to rebound from this event.

Need for Speed... er Haste

The biggest change for resto druids in this last patch was the nerf to a talent called Gift of the Earthmother. Before the patch, it read "reduces the base global cooldown of your Rejuvenation, Lifebloom and Wild Growth spells by 4/8/12/16/20%." The talent was changed to do the following, "This talent now increases spell haste by 2/4/6/8/10% and reduces the base global cooldown of Lifebloom by 2/4/6/8/10% instead of its previous effects."

So what does this exactly mean? Not alot of people understand the math behind haste (I barely do), so let me sum it up this way, More haste = Less Global Cool Down = more spells can be cast in a certain time frame. For example as poster commented on another druid, this means you can cast 60 Rejuvenations compared to 40 in a minute (that is if you never have to move or cast another spell or get interrupted). It could also allow a druid to spam Nourish if he/she had the mana for that type of healing.

But Bacon, where's the nerf? Well it's in the elimination of reducing the Global Cooldown (GCD) for Rejuvenation and Wild Growth. Rejuvenation is a huge spell for druids in both PVE and PVP and with the Idol of Flaring Growth, it's a very powerful spell in a druid's arsenal. So there had to be something done to balance the PVP side of things (yet they left a GCD reduction on Lifebloom, interesting isn't it). Wild Growth is a major player in my rotation since most of raids are melee heavy and adding an AOE HoT on the people around the tank helps out the other healers covering the raid (or tanks).

I don't PVP much anymore, but I can definitely feel the affects of this nerf in ICC carrying a haste rating of only 417. Fights that were nerve wrecking became near mental meltdowns for me to heal like I did before patch 3.3. I realized that I should have researched this earlier, but resto druid gear, specifically T9 and equivalent gear, just wasn't itemized that heavy for haste.

So how much haste do I need? Well most of the information I found had soft cap data based on running 25 man raids. In those raids a resto druid is more likely to have access to a Wrath of Air totem (5% haste increase) and improved Moonkin/Swift Retribution aura (3% haste increase). Unfortunately, I may not see those alot in my 10 man group. So based on my spec with 3/3 points in Celestial Focus (3% spell haste increase) and 5/5 into Gift of the Earthmother, I should be carrying a haste rating of ~1063! Holy Pork Fat!!! That's another 518 from my current rating of 545. Oh boy. Seriously Bacon, are you right about this? I wish I wasn't, but here's just a couple of sources I've found on the subject:

• 
  http://treehaelz.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/being-hasty-patch-3-3-haste-and-t10/


• 
  http://elitistjerks.com/f73/t37578-restoration_itemization/p41/#post1447142
  

Now, a Wrath of Air totem drops that rating to ~856. Add in the improved Moonkin form or Sift Ret Aura and that number drops to ~736. Those numbers seem a little more realistic, but to get all those buffs means your raid needs those spec in their makeup. And in our 10 man raid, I don't see it happening.

Now the next biggest question is, how important is it that I have this haste. Is it really something that's needed? Can I get by with say 750 haste? Those are all good questions that I hope to answer in the next coming month or 2. So far, we've been able to clear 7 out of 12 bosses in ICC with me having half the haste I need. Will the next 5 bosses test this healer's lack of haste that much more? We'll see. This subject definitely is open for debate.

Professor Pwn'd should be his name

Our regular Sunday night raid was the 3rd night this week for the guild, but it was my first night to raid this week and I was concerned that I was going to be rusty. Earlier in the day I had changed up my spec to pick up a balance talent called Celestial Focus to get another 3% haste. Patch 3.3 nerfed the Gift of the Earthmother talent and has forced resto druids to rethink how they gear/spec/enchant/gem for haste. A good article on this can be found over at TreeHaelz. I'm working on a post on how I'm tackling this subject which I'll publish later because with no buffs my haste rating should be around 1050 - 1063. I know that sounds like alot and I don't even know if I can reach it.

Our raid composition was changed from the last time I tried this guy. We went with 2 healers (druid and priest), instead of 3. A warrior tank, prot pally, ret pally, DPS warrior, DPS Death Knight, Moonkin, Shadow Priest, and hunter (not sure of his spec, I just know he's good at killing things) filled out the rest. See anything missing? Yep, our resto shaman was on standby for the raid leaving us without totems and heroism. YIKES!!! Some voiced concern that we were setup for a hard road, but we were going to try anyway.

We had a couple attempts last night where our warrior tank (riding in the construct) got DC'd and then our other tank got locked up, but I'm going to just mention the viable attempts for sanity's sake.

The first attempt went fairly well and the healing was pretty manageable. I was healing the tank and throwing out some hots on our priest. Sometimes it's real easy to overlook your own health if you're raid healing. Our healing team is real good at looking out for each other as well as covering the other duties if one of us gets incapacitated (bonespikes, killed, or whatever). But back on subject. The transitions on the first phases went well and it seems that no matter what, we always had an orange slime spawn a few seconds before the first tear gas at 77%-80%. If our ranged DPS got a few DoTs on it, then we were fine. If not, then we're hosed. So this is one thing to consider on the fight. My biggest hurdle was at the start of phase 3 where the tanks transitioned and the Professor's damage increased. And when we got to the first attempt on phase 3, my HoTs just couldn't keep him up and we wiped.

The next attempt was progressively better and I blew everything I had at the beginning of phase 3 to keep the tank up (it was here that I wished I had kept Nature's Swiftness in my spec). It worked out, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind here. One, you no longer have anyone helping to clean up the slime puddles. These boxed us in on this attempt and caused the wipe. Ranged DPS couldn't DPS and I had to run through the slime to heal the tank. It was just a no win siutation. The second thing to remember as a healer is that BOTH tanks have to live. There is no forgiveness in this fight if one tank dies because the stacking debuff will zap the raid and the death of the other tank heals the Professor. But we wiped around 17ish% at that time. It was discussed that maybe the tanks kite the Professor clockwise in that phase around the outer edge of the room.

The following attempts resulted in some ill timed slime bubble spawns that carried into the 3rd phase. You're raid DPS really needs to back off when the Professor is around 37%-38% so that the chances of carrying another slime into the 3 phase doesn't happen. It seemed that when it would happen to us it was a guaranteed wipe. One those wipes occurred when we took him down to 4% or 5%. It could have been a successful attempt had our DPS not have the added task of killing an ooze in phase 3.

By this time in the evening, everyone knew what they needed to do and when. The first phase went pretty easy and then somewhere in the second phase we lost a ranged DPS. A quick battle rez from me and he was back in the fight. Besides that little hiccup our transitions were flawless and we were quickly into phase 3. Just like before, I burned all I had on the main tank and when I heard him tell the prot pally, "That's stack 4, taunt", I swapped to healing the new tank. It was shortly after the tank swap that I saw that my own health taking a dive. There was nothing I could do about it. If I healed myself, then one of the tanks could possibly die and wipe the raid. That's when Sameth (our holy priest) stepped in threw some heals on me.

At 8% things got real hectic and I believe we lost some DPS when the tanks swapped again. I couldn't honestly say who because I had "tank healer tunnel vision." It happens when I get in the zone and the fight is really close. But I stayed along the wall kiting along just ahead of the tanks. Then 2% and then 1% came. I quickly looked at the raid and only me, the priest healer, and the 2 tanks are alive. Sameth dies and I soon follow her after I get a few more HoTs off on both tanks. This has to be it because the raid mod showed the Professor at 0%, but both tanks throw everything at him till he's face down. FINALLY!!! Another epic kill for us. The professor dropped a nice tanking trinket, Unidentifiable Organ and leather DPS helm, Discarded Bag of Entrails.

But the coolest thing of all was the accolades the raid gave us healers. I want to say thanks, but we all did it as a team.

Skip the heroic and Get your roses elsewhere

Last night the wife came down with some stomach purging illness which I made sure that Luke and I would stay away from. So on the way to pick him up, I stopped by the store bought me some PlowBoy Porter (a microbrew selection out of St. Genevieve, MO) and a Little Ceasar's Pizza. Not the best pizza in the world, but my 6 year old loves it.

Eventually, I log on after I get the kid in bed and find out the raid had been going for about 20 minutes. The night before, the raid managed to clear everything up to the Professor which is great because that means they man handled Rotface. I get into vent to listen to how things are going and the attempts were sounding like a roller coaster. 76% on one attempt and then 40% the next. Eventually, they worked him down to 4% before calling it a night. I'm happy that the raid team is having really good success. Hopefully next week I can be a part of it. :)

As I was listening in on the raid working the Professor over, I decided to run my daily heroic. I see Utgarde Keep load and think, "Well this should be a fast run." So we take off with me, a prot pally, mage, a warrior, and a shadow priest. Things run very well up to Prince Keleseth. He dies and drops he rose. I pass since I got them the day before and only two people roll need on them, the warrior and mage. I "grats" the warrior and then the prot pally and mage up and /leave dungeon. WTH? You just up and leave because you didn't get the roses? If there is something you want from an instance, say something upfront and give the party a heads up. And if you decide to leave, at least have the common courtesy to say goodbye.

Now the party is stalled and this is my random heroic. Fortunately, the RNG gods are gracious and we get a DK tank and ret pally in less than 2 minutes. The heroic runs flawlessly from there out and we're done.

So just a word to all those out there, if you need the roses, get a group of 3 and run regular Halls of Stone. The roses still drop in a regular instance run and 3 skilled and geared 80s can farm Maiden till she gives them up.

Deadbeat Healer

Ok, 3 posts today. I had them done, but I haven't had a chance to put them out there.

Wednesday night our raid started a new week in ICC. I was informed that we had 13 people available and I was asked to sit. That's fine. I've received alot of drops off the first 3 bosses and gunship event, so there's nothing there for me to gain but Frost emblems (I'm currently sitting at 102 which I'll talk about later). So I knocked out some dailies, ran the random heroic (Old Kingdom and I picked up my bouquet of red roses off Prince Taladram. I outrolled a need (54 to a 49) on another player. I feel bad when that happens, but my friends reassured me that I shouldn't.

Sometime after the heroic or maybe turning in charm bracelets to the faction leaders, our RL whispers me and asks if I'll be available for the last 30 minutes. Our resto shaman has a strict time limit and has to log. I think he has a job that requires him to be there early. Anyway, when he whispered me it was way early in the evening and I told him I should be around. So I hearthed out to the Tournament Grounds when I was done with dailies and started watching a little TV when I heard my 6 year old get out of bed. So I bring him down to the computer room and we lay on the couch and watch a little TV together. Next thing I know I'm waking up on the couch to a fuzzy TV screen, a sleeping kid next to me, and a disconnected WOW screen. Oops, I think I just made the definition of a deadbeat healer. Sorry guys.

As for the 102 Frost Emblems, I have no idea what to do next. I have the cloak and the resto idol (which somedays I wonder was the right choice, but what is done is done and no regrets). I thought the first tier upgrades would be the shoulders and gloves, but I hate to break up my set bonuses by buying just one item. So I thought I'd wait till I had enough for the gloves and shoulders together. Or I could store them up for primordial saronite and get the boots recipe. I could make them for myself and our other druid, but that's alot of emblems and I don't know if it warrants that much time (time that I don't have alot of). So I may go with the shoulders and gloves.

Weekend Love

This weekend I got another achievement for Glory of the Hero. What the Eck? was pretty simple, it was just getting him to spray me was the hard part. We had issues in that the stairs leading down to him prevented me from getting it and it led him to getting enraged and killing us. On our second attempt, the elemental shaman (who needed alot of lessons on threat management and party courtesy) barked out that he was done racking up a repair bill and didn't give sh!t about anyone's achievements. I'm sorry dude, but we explained at the beginning of the run that we were going to do this. The next thing he knows, he's been voted out and sitting on the curb back in Dalaran on his server. The sad thing is he was so close to finishing the run. Bummer.

After that run, a warrior in Heroes and I queued up to see if we could get me Zombiefest to finish out the Glory of the Hero for me. We played it all by heart, killed the second boss in the inn to allow more zombies to spawn, but my warrior buddy didn't get enough to follow him. He said he should have ran around the fountain a few more times. Oh well, maybe later this week it'll happen.

For the rest of the weekend, I spent a good part of time with my brother. He was in town and we rarely get to hang out. So being the loving wife that Kim is, she let me and my brother go bowling while she watched over the homestead and kid. We love to bowl and we're quite competitve between each other (as some brothers are). We even have a little wager when we bowl, whoever loses buys the beer. Well I lost the first game by 1 lousy pin. ONE!!! So I bought the beer for the next game, but I went on to win the next 4 games.

Anyway, on Sunday he had to head back home leaving me to watch the Superbowl all alone. That's ok. I ended up starting some of the achievements for Love is in the Air event while having the game on the near by TV. I'm not a huge fan of either team, but since the Saints are an NFC team, I'm glad they won. A little later a few guildmates logged on and we went and worked over the seasonal boss for Love is in the Air. He didn't drop the pink Love rocket with the zebra lined seat, but he did drop a few 226 necklaces. I think it's time I quit saying I'm going to dust off my lock on the horde side and acutally do it. That Winking Eye of Love would a great upgrade for her and save her some emblems in the process.

Professor has lessons for everyone

Monday night took us to the Plague Quarter again to visit the Professor. What I don't get is why the trash has respawned? Is it tied to the professor and not his two little buddies Festergut and Rotface? Oh well, if we wanted to get to the professor then we would have to remove the rift-raff.

Our attempt counter was at 20 (of course a recent announcement by Blizzard is that attempt limits are being removed for the non-heroic runs), but we started late and knew that we wouldn't have time for all 20. The raid setup for us was almost on par with 3 healers and the same 2 tanks. However, we only had 1 melee DPS with us tonight and our Raid Leader said that we had a close to ideal group setup for him. I would be healing the main tank, while the other 2 healers are handling the respective raid groups they were in.

This is another situational awareness fight in which you have to constantly watch alot of crap going on. Phase 1 is pretty manageable and I had no mana issues whatsoever. Our paladin tank took the professor and received what I though was light to moderate damage. Our warrior tank took on the abomination to eat goo/slime puddles and help nuke the slime bubbles that spawned during the fight.

All of our fights went pretty well and we seemed very coordinated in moving across the room. Unfortunately, the slime adds love the taste of resto shamans and poor Ron spent a good part of some of them facedown. I got lucky and only got targeted a few times the whole night. Our best attempt was 50% and failed because our DPS got behind on DPSing the slimes. Overall, I thought the healing was manageable and there's a possibility that I could be DPSing in this fight the next raid week.

Finally Rotten

With the Superbowl this coming Sunday, we had to juggle our raid schedule around and push for having our second night on Thursday night. We really didn't know how this was going to play out since Thursdays usually knock out 2 of our main melee DPS players as well as a priest. But tonight's raid started and looked really promising with 3 healers (I sub sometimes as a range DPS with my secondary spec), rogue, ret pally, 2 hunters, moonkin, and our 2 tanks ready to go.

Trash up to Festergut went semi smoothly since we only had 9 people (our resto shaman had something come up that delayed him, lucky bastard). I will say that the trash to Fester and Rotface isn't tough, just annoying. I usually stay DPS on this stuff just to help speed things up. I'm more like the fiber supplement in someone's vitamins, I just help keep things moving along.

Eventually we made it to Festergut and proceeded to one shot him. He's become pretty manageable for us. I know my role and that I need to start helping on the tank healing after the first growth. Everyone seems to know what to do with the spores especially if they see that two are in the same group.

But now we make our way to Rotface. He's been a thorn in our side going on 3 weeks now and it's actually stirred a response from our RL that he's concerned about this obstacle. Raid Leaders and GMs are like that, they a stoppage in progression for too long being a deteriment to the guild. I would say that's probably true in most guilds, but I don't think we're there yet.

So we change our strategy in that we try out putting one group on one leg and another on the other leg (thanks for the idea Boston). This attempt seemed really manageable, but I think it was too new for our raid and people voted it down after the first wipe. I will admit, it was ALOT more manageable for healing. I'm going to bring it up again in the forums and suggest that we try it again. Our current process of just randomly grouping behind him and turning when he turns is becoming more of a "charlie foxtrot" than a strategy. But our attempts proceeded to whittle him down each time, 43%, 38%, 35%, etc. with a minor hiccup of 60% in there.

Finally with 11 minutes left on my flask, we decide to make just another try or two and then call it a night. My job on this fight is increasing hard, but it comes with the nature of being able to heal and move at the same time. Our RL calls me the "Swing Healer" because I can go from throwing a HoT or 2 on the tank, then on the kiting tank, and back to the raid. But I have to be aware of toxin injections on healers because not only do they need a heal, but then I have to cover their assignment as well. Keep in mind, I am like everyone else that I have to stay away from the puddles, slime spray, and whatever else that will kill me. It's a busy fight and while it can be frustrating, I enjoy the challenge. So here we are, things are moving along pretty well. But then we get our first problem, all of a sudden there's 2 larger slimes. Someone failed to drag theirs over when they got injected and letting it merge with the next injection bubble. But the kiting tank did a great job of bringing them together. Unfortunately, we lost a hunter in the kiting process. 30% brings about faster slime injections and bubbles as well as killing a healer. He gets a battle rez from our Moonkin and we push Rot to 20%. We just may do this I start to think. Around 15% we lose another hunter and our rogue. Now it's starting to look tight. Rotface is pushing real hard and slowly people are getting lost in how to turn and then die. A healer dies and our Moonkin drop at 5%. With one other healer still alive with me, I decide to burn a Battle Rez for more DPS and get out moonkin back on his feet. Just as he accepts our tank dies along with his healer. The only people left alive at this point is me, the moonkin, and our prot paladin. Our moonkin gets in a few nukes and dots at 2% and I follow with a few weak DoTs at 1% as we both die. But our Prot paladin kites Rot just long enough to let the dots kill him. Euphoria erupts over vent. Finally we did it. Good job guys.

Monday night ushers in the professor and I'm sure he has alot to teach us.

Welcome back for an old friend

Late Wednesday night after our raid finished, Desirabela rejoined the guild. I'm happy to have her back with us. We haven't had a mage in the guild for a long time. We've tried out a few, but they never came back. I think adding another caster ranged DPS to our mix will be great. We have tons of melee DPS and we make do, but it's really taxing on the healers on some fights. I think this is one of the reasons we end up carrying 3 healers into certain fights.

Anway, I'm rambling again. Welcome back Des. :)

Seriously? 9%?

So our week ended with another night of getting owned by Rotface. I sometimes seriously wonder if we'll get past this guy, but at least we're making progress. Last week we only managed to get him to 52%. Monday night we whittled him down to 9%. I'm not sure what we need to change up. It could be that running 3 healers maybe too much and that we should go with 2. I'm not quite sure. Being a healer I see alot of what's going on and the raid is pretty aware of slime pukes and who's got the toxin and needs to kite it out. Maybe this week, we're successful. I hope so because the next wing was opened on Tuesday.

On other news, my frost mage is leveling a little slow. She's level 72 on the horde side of things and has yet to get ganked. I probably just jinxed it right there, but I've had fun with her. It seems like I'm missing alot of horde quests in the Fjord, but then again this is the first horde toon I've quested with in WoTLK. I'll probably queue her up for some random dungeon/instance. I'm not sure how they determine which to send you too. At level 72, Frostwinch is eligible for Utgarde Keep and the Nexus. I just wish I could find a way to get her some gold for her flying mount and training. I could have her post something on the neutral AH for an insane amount and have Bacon buy it. But Bacon is pretty stingy with the gold and has come to spurn charitable causes, no matter how close the toon is in relation to him.

Plus Bacon has a good reason for hording his gold. He's contemplating making a run for some mounts. He's honored with the Netherwing, so there's some rep to grind (man I hated those days of getting ganked there). He needs all the ground mounts from the major city factions. He could grind PVP marks for the war mounts and cash in tournament marks for those other mounts. So there's alot of potential for him to increase his fleet beyond the same blue saber cat mount, the ram from AV, and the drake from Culling of Strat. I would add flight form to the list, but I can't consider that a mount. It's an ability really. Got any easy to obtain mount ideas? And don't suggest Reins of the Time-Lost Proto-Drake


P.S. Coutdown to Glory of the Hero is at 2.