T minus 44 Hours* and Counting...

Everyone has had their own Pre-Wrath To-Do List, whether it was on paper or just in their head. I've spent this weekend ticking off quite a few things I had on mind. Here's what I managed to accomplish:

1. Put in and was approved for my first personal day ever for Nov. 14th. I put in for it the day they announced release date. I know this will put me about 16 hours behind most people, but I can't leave my kids with a sub two days in a row. 
   
2. Planned a menu for the weekend with Yakra. He has Tuesday off for Veteran's Day, so he will cook then and we can freeze and re-heat.
   
3. Emptied out my bank. I blew up crap tons of gear. I got over 30 void crystals from gear that had little sentimental value, no sexy value, and less raid value since 3.0.2 spell power. I can't remember the last time I had this much bag space! And no... I did not get rid of my Fruitcake collection or my Light of Elune. 
   
4. Lesson planned up to Dec. 11th. That means I don't need to worry about more lesson planning and worksheet/quiz/powerpoint making until like... Thanksgiving weekend. 
   
5. Turned down plans for this weekend and next weekend that various friends and family tried to rope me into. I've have lied to people in general saying Yakra and I are taking a vacation. I have also told my mother I'm going to be busy and to not take it personally if I don't pick up the phone. 
   
6. Invited some of my WoW friends to an open house type thing. Meaning Yakra and I will be playing and playing until we drop and will have lots of snacks, easy to reheat food, and caffeine. 
7. Got my nails done and had them painted WotLK blue. 
8. Earned the Outland Dungeon Hero achievement. (Even though I had done them all before.)
   
9. Earned the Explore Outland achievement by uncovering one little strip of land in Hellfire. 
10. Saw Kil'jaden, pulled him, and got him well into Phase 3 multiple times (with only 2 hours or so of attempts.) Yes, the plan was to kill him, but I feel this overwhelming sense of completion just seeing him. 
11. Earned Loremaster of Outland. Those last three quests in Nagrand for Nagrand Slam were a challenge to find! I'm really enjoying achievements more than I thought I would!
12. Wrote obligatory "Pre-Wrath To-Do List". Enough said!

*I will not be going to a midnight release, nor did I take Thursday off, so it will be about 4pm on Thursday before I am actually able to play. 

3.0 Resto Druid Healing Rotation Revisited

See my original post here.

What looks good on paper must always be put to test in the real thing. Thats what I have been up to for the last two and half weeks. Since 3.0 LOKI has downed Kelacgos, Brutallus, Felmyst, and Twins. (M'uru dies tonight we hope!) This healing rotation has proved helpful and healing meter toppable (or at least bumping me to the top third), but I have done some tweaking. It has had positive effects on farmed content in BT, including Illidan. Farming BT the second night of 3.0 was my original "oh my God I suck now" moment. 

My original rotation had me tossing up Wild Growth followed by Lifebloom in pairs. I was quickly frustrated at Wild Growths tendency to splash wildly over to other 5 players and not stick on my tank, and my idiotic inability to prevent Lifebloom from expiring if it wasn't the first heal in my rotation. By making Lifebloom my first heal again, I can use GridStatusLifebloom to time my healing rotation. 

Hand in hand with "WTF won't WG stick on my tank?" is my filling the flex space in my rotation by spamming WG on the tank until it sticks, or I need to refresh my next HoT. Worst case scenario I'm healing the melee!

So my current rotation is: Two LB and a RJ to get started, then: LB, WG, RG, LB, WG, WG, RJ, LB, WG, WG, WG {REPEAT} Any Wild Growth casting can be easily replaced by a swiftmend or a pair of WG can be replaced by a regrowth on the raid. And of course there is the option of omitting a casting or two of the expensive spell for repositioning and mana regen. 

I am still running with Idol of the Emerald Queen My new spec can be found here. 

Feedback welcome!

EDIT: Disaster Averted

Complete disaster was slightly averted. I managed to get things working (but not up to the levels I really want to see). I will DEFINITELY be looking into the advice of the two comments I posted, and hopefully I will be singing your praises tomorrow! 

Despite the disaster that was last night and most of this afternoon, we pulled off a ridiculously fun raid tonight. We cleared BT in 2 hours, 45 minutes. We one shot everything. Trash went REALLY fast, which was nice. But the bosses were too easy... it was fun for one night. But I couldn't do that forever. 

I'm still getting a feel for healing. I'm not sure where to stick Wild Growth in the rotation. And I'm feeling really down on myself for being SO LOW on the healing meters. Any advice on rotations would be appreciated!

I know I don't talk about loot much any more, but I got Memento of Tyrande!!! I'm so excited. I have had twice the DKP of everyone in our guild stock piled for it. Yes, it finally solves my 15 month long internal, emotional, struggle of "what trinket should I be using!" But more importantly, it is a really awesome lore piece. To be honest, I feel a little BAD for Illadin. He was just an angsty teen who had his heart broken. And here, until his dieing day (by my hand of course) he has held on to this memento of his love... *sigh* Isn't it romantic?

LOKI ~ Faster than the Speed of Blog

I started this post on Sept. 9th and like a thousand other things, never got around to finishing it. The good news is, we've downed Council a bunch of times since and I know my healing set up works great! It's a month late, but here it is:

We down bosses faster than I can blog. Since my last post we have downed Illidari Council and picked up our first two bear mounts. (Neither of them went to me.)

I think the bear mount runs have made me a better healer. I'm much better at keeping many stacks of HoTs on 2 or 3 tanks, while still raid healing in between. I think ZA in general is more fun with only 2 healers. Trash with 3 was getting really boring. In general, I'm glad I took a long break from ZA - it is SO much easier now.

We downed Illidari Council in about an hour and a half of working on them. I found the Olympics of Not Standing in Stuff tons of fun. We have downed them for a second time as well. (7 times total by Oct 4th.)

Here is how we did healing for Illidari Council:
Galthios Tank: 2 Paladins, a Priest, and a Druid
(Galthios is tanked on the east side of the room. The tank moves him in a square as the tank avoids all the AoEs. you want a healer on each corner of the square so someone is always easily in range. We put the two paladins on the far right/east side, so they would be less likely to have to move out of stuff, and the priest and druid on the west side, which is in the middle of everything.)
Veras Tank: 1 Druid
(The druid can HoT people who get Deadly Poison and heal the raid in general whenever Veras vanishes.)
Zerevor Tank: 1 Paladin or Priest
(We have just found our Pallies can put out the most healing to best keep up with the spiky damage your mage tank will be taking.)
Malande Tank: Wild Card Spot
(I put whoever is left here, since I think anyone can do it well. Actually, most people don't want to be assigned here because it's too easy.)
Malande Interrupters: 1 Shaman
(They can heal them all with one click of a button, as well as help the Malande healer if it comes to that, and still but out a bunch of general raid healing.)
Raid: 1 or 2 Priest(s) or Shaman(s)
(We learned the fight with 2 raid healers and needed them both to keep up with our folks who weren't even placing in the Olympics of Not Standing in Things. But now that most of us are Gold Medalists, we can pull it off with 1 raid healer.) 

The End is Here!

Today was my official last day of summer vacation. Which is funny since I have been in to school every day this week trying to get ahead so I can still have a life when school starts. I think I'm ready! I don't have lunch duty this year and have a last period study hall again which is exciting. Lunch duty was just too boring for me. I have one section of Chemistry with only 9 students so that will be a blast for sure. I have a 9th grade homeroom again (meh). I shall lay down the law and we will get along just fine.

I sort of kind of lead my first raid last Sunday. I normally just do healing and help some with DKP, and Yakra and Ruff really run the raids. But neither Yakra or Ruff were able to be on. Both of our DPS officers were on, and they did their job, but they are brand new. The new healing officer was a HUGE help handing out SR gear mats. And our pally tank did all the marking and trash, which he is very good at and has done plenty of times before. But I was the senior officer and sort of had last call and stuff.

Related to leading my first raid was downing Mother Shaz for the first time, on the first raid I lead, the very first time we attempted her. We used a 3 camp set up: 1 Melee camp and 2 ranged camps (with healers split between the two camps.) We also used Easy Mother. (The key is to not follow it blindly through the raid/tanks, and run even if it says stop if you are too close to the raid/tanks.)
We did healing for Mother Shaz as follows:
9 healers
2 Paladins on the Main Tank
1 Paladin on both Off-Tanks
1 Druid rolling HoTs on all three Tanks
1 Shaman on Melee
4 CoH Priests, Druids, and/or Shamans assigned one to each ranged/tanking group.
(I prioritized druids, then priests to the group(s) with tanks in them, to give the tanks some more HoTs. After that I assigned people to heal their own groups for simplicities sake.)

Last summer I called myself the lucky druid because whenever people wanted gear, if I thought about it really really hard, it would drop. This summer I seem to be an even luckier druid! First I received my e-mail informing me that I had been chosen to buy a FigurePrint! Yakra has been on a business trip this week and has eaten as little as he can so he can pocket the cash so we can buy one. I figure we will get on of Yakra since its not just his WoW character, but his alter ego. (And he likes presents.) And yesterday I got my e-mail inviting me to the Wrath of the Lich King beta. So far it has done nothing but patch and say "connected" on the very pretty blue login screen. I only wish I had more time to play it. I wonder what my students would think if they found out I was in the beta!

In other real life/sort of WoW life news, the great RuffianX spent last weekend at our house. I had freed up my schedule and stress load totally so I was able to relax and have a very nice time. We played board games and went for dinner with some other guildies. Yakra and Ruff went Kayaking and Ruff beat Yakra a bunch of times at brawl. We tried ZA for the bear mount, but missed it yet again, and went for ice cream way late at night.

I've also been hanging out with another RL/WoW friend. We went to college together and were close then. She transfered servers some time back, so I have never gotten to raid with her. Her guild is well into Sunwell now. We are like a year behind them. Then they moved to the other side of the river which put them far away, but since I got the new job I am out her way all the time. So both of us have been busy with raiding and houses, but she has some stuff going on that I want to be able to be there, so I'm making time. And actually its really nice to not have to explain WHY you NEED to be back home by 7:45. So its really cool because I've missed her.

The End is Near!

The end of the summer that is... I enjoy playing stay at home wife WAY too much. I have gotten loads of projects done around the house, have made something along the lines of progress with lesson planning, slept until at least 8 most morning, and been enjoying some extra WoW time. I start in-services for school on Aug 15th QQ

In the LOKI department ~ We recently downed Reliquary of Souls. One night, three hours total. Oh ya! It was in NO way a hard healing fight for us. The first time we got RoS into phase three we downed him/her/it. It really is all about the interrupters, but here is what we did for healing RoS: 2 paladins on the main tank (a warrior in phase 2 and a paladin tank in phase 3); a resto shaman on the melee group; and 2 CoH priests, another resto shaman, and a resto druid assigned to each of the 4 mostly ranged dps groups. Everyone DPS phase 1, a lot of us off DPSed phase 2, and then healed our little hearts out in phase 3. We just kept to our assignments so no heals or time were wasted cross healing.

We have lost some good healers recently, but we had differences. Even though they were good and took some good gear with them, I would rather not have to deal with... well... drama. So it is less stress for me over all. We have more paladins than I really know what to do with. I try to get them all in for the bosses they want the most, and we have done some insane things pally heavy (like 1 druid, 1 priest, and 5 pallies for Azgalor.) And we could use another resto shaman or two who show up for freaking raids! But what else is new with alliance?

As of tonight I have a new co-healing officer! I am rejoicing!!! He is going to be SO much better than the last two other co-healing officers. (I'm still very good friends with one, but he just didn't like to talk that much in raids so he probably wasn't the best.) Aforementioned new healing officer is going to be awesome. He comes to like EVERYTHING, have been in the guild for almost 4 months, has totally the right attitude about progressing and loot, talks in vent, takes healing reports and strats seriously, but still jokes around a ton. And he doesn't think I'm a total freak for having my spreadsheet of my healers!

Our DPS officers have been AFWoW for a month. This is starting to impact my and Yakra's sanity. Ruffles is at least great, makes almost everything, and can do DPS. We have two temporary DPS officer types, just for during raids to coordinate, they don't deal with apps, drama, etc. But what we really need is for our current officers to come back or for two official new officers.

Archimonde Down!

Summer is upon me in all of its glory, and what better way to start it than by downing Archimonde?!

We spent a total of 10 hours on him. Our final solution - go through the WoW Web Stats for the previous night attempts and list every first and second death, why they dead, and applicable comments (like the time I was healing myself through grip instead of shifting out and decurseing myself. I blame the mage...)

And then our 30 minutes "L2 use tears" session before we started attempts on the last night. We spent 30 minutes jumping off the cliff as a group until we were able to do it 3 times in a row without anyone dieing. Then and only then, would the great Ruffianx let us start attempts. No one cratered on any of our 3 attempts. We got him down on the 3rd, the first time we got him to 10%.

Nothing out of the ordinary for how we set up groups. Shaman with tremor totem in each group. Decurser (mage, boomkin, or elf formed ToL druid) in each group (except melee). At least 2 healers in each group (except melee). I was running in the main tank group, in tree form, with a mage decurseing. One melee group in the middle and then each of the other four groups positioned at each cardinal direction.

So here are some things that we learned:
1. Get Boar's Speed on your boots - especially if you are going to be in ToL form. (I really noticed the difference.)
2. Run straight back from Archimonde, with your whole group, if you even think a doomfire is chasing someone in your group. (You need to be near your decurser and healers and you need to not kite the fire around the rest of the raid and box people in.)
3. When you get air bursted use your tears on the early side and then switch into cat form. This way there is no chance of you cratering because of lag and whatnot.

And if thats not enough advice for you, listen to this. (Sorry about the language - but its still really funny...)

Pushing Archie

Time flies when you have a real job! I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since my last post!

Real Life Update:
I am still liking the job. There was a week or two in there that was really bogged down with paperwork, but somehow I managed to crawl out from under the 14 feet of labs and worksheets I had to grade. I'm ready for summer because I want to get ahead with planning and have great plans, instead of only okay plans. I'm not a fan of being only one week ahead and sometimes having to drive to get my printing in time. NINE MORE DAYS UNTIL SUMMER YAY!

WoW Update:
Shade of Akama was a cake walk, like we expected. Taron Gorefiend was a little frustrating. We spend about 3.5 nights over 2.5 weeks working on him until we killed him. Of course it was the inability to kill the shadowy constructs. There is a simulator game we all played, but I don't know if it helped me. I am used to watching and clicking on dots (boxes) on my screen. What I'm not good is actually clicking on mobs that may be standing in front of or right next to each other. I noticed the healers seemed to be the worst at killing them. I don't think it is a coincidence - I think it is our tunnel vision. And I don't know if there is any way to help besides doing the fight more or having a ranged dps alt and just grinding crowded areas. I have had a serious lack of practice since I have only gotten Shadow of Death TWICE in all our attempts. I don't want to be "that girl". Who always wipes the raid... We killed Gorfiend once and are now putting BT on hold until Archie is down.

Some nights we rock Hyjal and one shot everything in two hours. Some nights it take 3 hours to get the first 3 bosses down. I have no idea what is going on there. Maybe it is burn out? I know I need to start stacking the healer classes for those fights. I want to consider it farmed content and let my healers have some say on what bosses they come in for and what they sit out for, but we just aren't there yet. And I don't believe the healing problems are player problems, just class differences I have been trying to ignore. No T6 for me yet. Its not like I don't have the DKP, I just don't need the gloves as much as some other people do.

We have spent about 2.5 nights total on Archie now. I think we are starting to work out the kinks on where we are going to run from fires and where groups are going to stand. . A few people seem to consistently die to dumb things, and I think people are being too brave too close to fires too near to fears. (Myself included). We are running healer heavy now. I figure if we can't live until 10%, who cares about the DPS race at the end. We will cross that bridge when we get to it. Our best attempt was about 54%.

We have had a HUGE healer turn over. I am expecting healers to make at least 40% of our raids by hour. Any less than that and they don't come enough to be worth teaching the fights to and giving the gear too. When most of our healers make 60% or so of raids, I don't think 40% is too much to ask.

We have never tolerated people being consistently too low on the healing meters, and are getting a little stricter on this. Yes, some fights will be better for some classes. Yes, our CoH priests are always going to out heal or Imp Spirit priest. But no one should be consistently far below the other healers. We had one healer like that. We asked them to consider themselves a non-raiding member of the guild. (They are really in it for the social stuff, not the raiding.)