Kara. Our guild’s normal set up for a Kara run involves 2 tanks, 3 healers and 5 DPS. What I’ve found is that that third healer is often quite bored, if the other two are pretty well geared. I started to wonder if that third healer was necessary, and then I heard of people running Kara with only one dedicated healer.

One healer for Kara? Are they nuts?

It sounded like something I would like to try. So I made a post about it on our guild’s forums to see if anyone would be willing to take the “One Healer Kara Challenge” with me at the helm. I’ve made some great strides in my gear, and I’d call myself about Tier 4.5 equipped. I have a lot of the best healing gear from Kara, the [Grovewalker's Leggings] and a couple of drops from SSC. This puts me at 1867 healing unbuffed, and healing is the only stat that I focus on.

(Not that Stamina, MP5 and Spirit are unimportant, it’s just that I find that the items with good +heal give me those stats anyway.)

Well, I managed to find enough interest, so I posted a run. We took our best geared prot warrior, who I would put at around Tier 5.5, who is also one of our Raid Leaders. We also took an offtank and 7 DPS classes, all ranged, all fairly well geared (some VERY well geared). One of those was a Shadow Priest we put in group 2 to make my job a little easier. There were also a couple other healing classes that could throw in emergency heals now and then, including a boomkin, elemental shammy, and the pally off tank.

My hope was that we would succeed by sheer strength of DPS. The boss fights would largely be a race. Could the DPS burn them down before my mana bar ran out? Everyone also pretty much knew that I would focus almost entirely on the MT, and couldn’t afford to toss out many other heals. To that effect, everyone brought plenty of pots and bandages.

So last night was the night. I was REALLY looking forward to testing my mettle. Another reason I wanted to do this was to prove that I could. I don’t often to get to raid with many of my guildies, so a lot of them rarely if ever got the chance to see me play. I’m sure a few of them wondered if I could handle it – I know I did.

We got started on time, and the pulls began. On the very first pull, I died. One of the skeletal horsies got loose and came for me as I was building a good deal of healing aggro off the bat. I was a little geeked up, and probably threw more healing out than I really needed to. Nerves. The skelly horse whacked me, feared me, and with no other healers to help ME out, I went down. Oh well.

We continued on to the first boss, Attumen. Again, I got a little to healy, and Attumen himself aggroed me. 2 shots, I’m dead. They still managed to take him down, though, with the Boomkin healing and mad, crazy DPS. Oh well again.

I have a real tendency to die a couple of times early on any run tougher than a normal five man. I’m not sure why that is, I guess I have to kind of get “warmed up” and get my healing legs beneath me. Part of this is probably because – due to my limited play time – I have to get in and get going right away. It just takes me a few pulls to get going. There is a real art to healing, and when I get in the zone I feel like I can keep anybody up. Under any circumstances.

After that, things started to go real smoothly. We one shot Moroes with no real issues. We moved on to Maiden and one shot her as well. For Opera we got Oz, which I thought might be the most difficult of the three, but we one shot that as well.

Then we got to Nightbane, and my world was turned upside down. Was it that I just didn’t have the chops to heal that tough fight? No, that wasn’t the problem. It was FRICKING TECHNICAL ISSUES. We start on Nightbane, and things are going swimmingly. I’m keeping the tank up, and we’re really dishing it out. The next thing I know, I’m lagging. HARD. Say hello to my first DC of the night. (I say first because there were MANY more to come.) And, of course, a wipe.

So I get back in and we try again. Another DC, another wipe. Third try, I DC early, manage to get back in, and we take him down. Ack.

After that, I DC’d all the time. On bosses, on trash, you name it. I took a few shots even, though I don’t remember where we were at this point..I think clearing to Aran.

ARRRGGHHH! ARRRRGGGHHHH!!! (Make sure you repeat that as you look at the pics for full effect.)

Here it kind of looks like I’m in some bad Sci-fi movie, and I froze everyone in time. I was also getting some very odd rubberbanding, where I would get “caught up” for half a second, then more freezage.

Ok, I wasn’t really laughing. Here you can see another angle on this fight. I suppose it might have been useful had I been diagramming a trash pull, or something. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

It turns out that’s how the WHOLE rest of the run went for me, for the most part. I managed to get through Curator without a DC. And man, was it beautiful with all that DPS. Once he got to his first Evocation phase, it was all over but the crying. I’ve NEVER seen him go down that fast. Heck, there’s a bunch of 5 man bosses I haven’t seen go down that fast.

I DC’d and we wiped on Aran. The second try I DC again, get back in, and we take him down. I get through Chess fine, though I stuck with a pawn just in case. (Of course I dont’ have any stupid DC issues on CHESS!!!) We get to Prince, and more DC issues abound. I DC once, wipe. I DC again, halfway through, and they took him down before I got back in. Thank god for massive, mind blowing DPS.

Needless to say, my frustration level was high, very high. Let’s put it this way, there was a fork nearby, and I was about 2 DCs from inserting said fork into either my DSL modem or my eye.

I have never had DC issues. Never. I just ran SSC Saturday night with NO problems. Now, when I’m trying something quite difficult for the first time, in an effort to prove myself and accomplish something cool, our group wipes multiple times because I can’t….fricking….stay connected!!

So we called it after Prince. (I did also upgrade my cloak to the [Stainless Cloak of the Pure Hearted] from Prince, bully for me. I also got a handful of off-spec feral upgrades.) I’m sitting here trying to put into words how frustrating it was, but I can’t. That’s how frustrating it was! I really feel like given the overall issues, it was a great success to get all the way through Prince. I think we did prove that it COULD be done with just one healer, and in a lot of ways it made the run more interesting. I only wish technical issues hadn’t gotten in the way. It would be one thing if I just couldn’t keep up. I could live with that. Maybe I’m just not good enough, or I need more +heal, whatever. But for the roadblock to be some frigging ISP related issue is just plain bupkiss.

Anyhow, that’s my story. I have good but not great gear, and I think normally I wouldn’t have any real problems one healing Kara. It would have been nice to see how Netherspite and Illhoof would go, but hopefully we’ll try this again in the future. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to drive to the local AT&T office and bust some heads. Thanks for reading!

Another milestone was reached in my raiding alliance on Saturday night. I’m sure you all remember my post about nasty old Leo. This time, it was personal.

Sure, he kicked us around last time. This time, though, we were better prepared to fight our inner demons, and from the start things were going well. Now, we didn’t one shot him or anything, but by the third try we finally seemed to have our act together. It wasn’t long before we took the shot below, over Leo’s dead body.

No good loot for yours truly, but I didn’t have a ton of interest in the T5 gloves anyhow. The exciting part was getting to 5/6 in SSC, and having the opportunity to take on the Big Lady herself. So we moved on, everyone giddy to finally have our own look at one of the final T5 bosses. We’ve been cutting our teeth in SSC for awhile now, learning the boss fights, improving our overall gear, and gaining valuable experience. At the point, we have the potential to one shot everyone up to Leo, as we have a good handle of those fights.

For us, getting to Vashj is our first real payoff.

One of the great things about WoW, and one of the reasons it has held me for so long (since closed beta), is that I have almost NEVER felt cheated. Whenever I have reached some kind of milestone, be it in five man instances or in Raids or elsewhere, I always felt like the payoff was really worth all the work. I have played a lot of MMOs previously, and their payoffs often felt empty. Your chasing that carrot on a stick for some time, when you get ahold of the carrot, it better taste pretty darn good.

Of course there are always more carrots, but the ones I have tasted in WoW have been pretty darn good. My first introduction to Lady Vashj was no exception. Here’s a shot of the hall leading to her, if you haven’t seen it before. Screenshots only do so much, though. It can’t give you what I felt as I walked through that hall.

Epic. That’s how it felt. You hit a console on a platform once everyone else is down, and the whole inside of the cavern seems to impossibly shift and twist to reveal the road to the Lady. Of course the typical Blizzard high attention to detail is present, with moss and vines hanging from the ceiling, vast open spaces, and the haunting voice of Lady Vashj, drawing you to her. You know you’re in for a heck of a fight. Here she is, patiently waiting to kick us around.

Now, I won’t try to bore you with the details of the fight and how we failed. We got in three good attempts, and everyone there learned a lot. We never got past the second phase, but we got that all valuable experience. IMO, when it comes to raiding, it’s all about everyone getting a good taste of the fight before you can succeed. The first phase is pretty basic, and we got through that easily enough all three tries. In the second phase, though, it takes on a very difficult, very chaotic, and very epic feel. Basically adds are coming from everywhere, and you have to deal with them all in different ways. Nasty adds.

Anyhow, we didn’t get her down. But now we’ve been there, and we’ve seen the fight. As it has been with all the fights thus far, it’s only a matter of time before it clicks for enough people and we take her down. I plan to be there that day.

The recent avalanche of information regarding Wrath of the Lich King got me to thinking. What are some of the changes I HOPED I would have seen? This is in part inspired by a post by Leafy at Leafshine: Lust For Flower. I quickly came up with a few things.

Start Experienced Players at Higher Level

What I mean by this is just what they’re doing with the new Death Knight class. Everyone starts at 55. Now, I’m not saying that we should be able to start all of our alts at 55, but it sure would be nice if we could get a little leg up. Maybe 30? 40 perhaps, and get to start out with a mount? Honestly, is there any reason an experienced player, who has seen the low level content at least once, can’t skip it? I don’t have anything to learn in Westfall any longer. I also don’t need my hand held through the development of new characters. I can learn what I need to know about a different class just as well from 30 or 40 on.

Of course you’d have to figure out what unlocks the ability to create alts at 30 or 40. Having one 70? 2 70s? I’d lean towards the former, but could live with the latter. Heck, maybe they could put in some quest to allow you to do so. Make it a fairly difficult group quest where completing it unlocks ONE character slot where you can “jump ahead.” Maybe something in the Caverns of Time? Like you end up pulling someone from in the past into the future?

I don’t really care if it’s cool or not, though. I just want to start my alts at 40!

Make My Armor Visible!

This is a druid centric wish. Like many druids, I don’t get to participate in the “fashion show” aspect of WoW as much as other classes. In 25 man raids, everyone looks all cool with their T5 level, fancy gear, and I look like…well, a tree. A boring, brown tree with boring, brown leaves. Can’t I look at least a LITTLE epic? How about make us get taller based on our gear level? Then people would KNOW what was up when a towering tree shambled around Shatt!!

Of course, I’d also be happy if they changed our forms to be more like shadowform. I mean, you can still see the priest’s armor, he just looks even more cool. Maybe have us take on a different hue or aura when shapeshifted. I’m just tired of looking like every other tree out there!

Insta-Mail For All

I don’t know about you, but I HATE having to wait an hour all the time. Sometimes I only HAVE one hour to play. So you can forget it if I’m waiting for a mat delivery sometimes. So why exactly is it that intra-account mail is instant, but mail to anyone else takes exactly one hour? Are they going for some kind of weird suspension of disbelief? Do they need to read everyone’s mail Big Brother like? I don’t get it!

Player Housing

Ok, ok. I know this is more a pipe dream than anything else, but I swear I remember Blizzard mentioning it while WoW was in development. My first big time MMORPG was Asheron’s Call, and one thing I loved was the housing. Just think of the money sink potential, Blizz! You could get a huge hold on the economy based on how it was done! Heck, I’ll take an apartment above Ironforge if that’s all I can get! (And yes, Asheron’s Call even had apartments!)  I’d just love my own little pad to decorate with, like, leaves and stuff!

Real REZ for DRUIDS, PLZ!

Yeah, yeah yeah. I think about 2.5 billion people have begged for this to no avail. Why are druids the red-headed stepchildren of the healing world? Yeah, I know, Battle Rez rocks. Does that mean we can’t have a real rez to go with it? Bizz, you realize this sometimes makes it difficult for us to get invites to 5 mans, right? If they don’t have another class to rez for us? Would you make tank class that wouldn’t taunt? No? Then why a healing class that CAN’T REZ??

Yeah, I’ve heard the argument. They want the healers to be different. That doesn’t mean you should hamstring us in a vital area. Oh well, at this point it probably isn’t happening. So where did I leave my Goblin Jumper Cables?

This is one of those posts that I’m sure in about half an hour I’ll come up with 8 more things I should have mentioned. This will do for now, though. So what’s one feature YOU would love to see?

First of all, I want to apologize for my absence last week. I only managed to get to 2 posts last week, as opposed to my usual 3 posts. Real Life hit me over the head when one of my coworkers suddenly left the company for greener pastures. Yours truly just happened to be this employee’s backup, so I ended up with a double workload for now. Of course the present state of the economy doesn’t help, as I don’t know if that post will be filled any time soon. Oh well, back to business!

So of course you’ve heard by now about the huge outbreak of news concerning Wrath of the Lich King. I won’t bore you with another features post, as my fellow bloggers and other sites have that well covered. I will take the time to touch on two pieces of news that are salient to the casual player. Here goes.

Raiding and Instances in Wrath

ALL raiding dungeons will have both a 10 and 25 man version. You’ll have to excuse me as I wipe the tears from my face. This, to me, is the most exciting piece of news I’ve heard about the expansion. My regular readers know by now that I come from a Casual raiding guild, with a strong emphasis on Casual. We run a few 25 mans in house, like Gruul, Magtheridon, and a smattering of runs in Mount Hyjal. We are also part of an alliance that is working on SSC and TK. We just flat out have never had the numbers to get serious about 25 man raids.

We can, however, put together at least 4 or 5 10 mans a week. Now, in Wrath, we will have a much larger selection of raiding options. Blizzard also let us know that the 10 and 25 man versions will be on separate lockout timers, and there will be NO attunements.

I cannot freaking wait. My guild LOVES Kara, but ZA was a bit of a letdown for us. It was just plain too tough for our overall gear level (go ahead and read my post on ZA if you like).  I can already see visions of having several 10 mans we could run in any given week.  Monday in Utgarde, Tuesday in Raid Dungeon #2, Thursday in Raid Dungeon #3.  You get the picture.  Ain’t it purty?

The 25 man version of the new instances will have loot a “tier higher” than the 10 man versions, according to Blizzard. I don’t really care. For me it’s never REALLY been about the loot.  It’s not that I want to have the best gear in game, I know that given my play time it wouldn’t be fair to other players. I may never see the inside of the Black Temple (though I could go there now and get kicked around!), and I just want freaking SEE things like Arathas!!!

Blizzard also let the world know that all 5 mans will have heroic versions with completely separate loot tables from the regular versions. I like heroics, but I always wished there was MORE too them loot-wise.  It’s always just a handful of differences.  There will also be a badge system similar to the present one in place, which is more good news.  The badge system is GREAT for Casual players.  It gives us a fighting chance at good loot!  Also, all the 5 mans are supposed to be doable in an hour. Woohoo! You mean I could finally do instances more often in my normal 1-2 hour play window? *sob*

The Death Knight

Really, there’s one big thing that I love about this news. We knew that Blizzard was planning on starting you off with a leg up as far as leveling, but now we know the Death Knight will start all the way at 55. This is great news for casual players! I might actually be willing to give one a whirl, now. If they started in their 20s or 30s, I’m not so sure I would have. My playtime is precious. I don’t know if I’d want to start off Wrath with a new level 1 or 20 or 30 to get a DK.  Now that I know I can start off in the old world, and it won’t be long before I can hit the Outlands, the Death Knight is a much more appealing possibility.  (Heck, I remember when on Day 2 of the BC release I saw a nearly level 60 Draenei Shaman run by. Some people have a crazy amount of time to spend in this game, but I’m not one of them.)

Another appealing aspect of the Death Knight is it sounds like I’ll finally be able to get the skeletal warhorse I always wanted as an alliance player! Woot! And, of course, there’s a whole new playstyle to figure out, and it sounds like the DK will be an appealing, hybrid type class. I love hybrids. It’s also good to know that any race can be a Death Knight. Just how many DK gnomes do you think there will be?

There’s a very big downside to the Death Knight for casual players, though. Now there’s yet ANOTHER alt we will be tempted to start!

Well, that’s the stuff that really jumped out at me. There’s a boatload more info, along with some great screenshots and even some wonderful movies over at Gamespy.com.  Heck, the news about more 10 mans alone was enough to make my heart go pitter patter and all that stuff. Now I REALLY can’t wait for Wrath!

One of the challenges of raiding in WoW is group combination and assignments. Assigning the players to task at which they excel or can use their abilities to their fullest is obviously what we all strive for. Where in a five man instance numbers are easy, one tank, one healer, 3 DPS, things get a little dicier as more people are added to the mix. Then you have to look closely at a number of different areas, including gear, experience and spec.

Most of the time, you end up with roughly 3 or 4 of your healers assigned to specific people, like the MT, the OT, and perhaps the Melee DPS, then the rest get assigned to the “raid.”  As a raid healer your job is to basically try to chip in anywhere damage is being taken.  Some people will assign raid healers to specific groups, others not.  In the raids I have been in, the raid healing role was kind of a “if it bleeds, toss a heal”, free for all mentality.

So to the question at hand: do Resto Druids make good raid healers? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons.

Pros:

• Nobody, and I mean nobody, has as many useful insta-cast healing spells as Resto Druids. We can lay two or three good hots on people before many a priest or pally finishes one spell windup. Our Insta-Cast HOTs can also tick for quite a bit, especially if we have time to put a couple LBs on, or a LB and Rejuv. In a lot of raid encounters, buying a second or two for the other healers to do their job can save the day for a DPS taking damage.
• Acting as a raid healer takes advantage of another strength of the Resto Druid – mobile healing. In a lot of raid fights, being able to get the heck out of the way without sacrificing any real heal time can be a HUGE benefit. I have a tendency to run around while raiding for no good reason, really…just to keep my eye on all parts of the fight. Many druids have great situational awareness, as their healing power is less dependent on staying still while casting.
• We also have the freedom to find people to Battle Rez if necessary. We are the only ones that can prolong a fight by bringing other people back up, and frequently this can be the difference. The Resto Druid assigned to the tank can’t take the couple of seconds out of his/her spell rotation to rez somebody.  A raid healing Tree can quite easily.

Cons:

• In some ways, acting as a Raid Healer hamstrings some of the Resto Druid’s biggest strengths, namely focused HOTs on 2 or 3 tanks. Our nice buff to healing from the Tree of Life aura is largely lost in this capacity as well, depending on what group we are stuck in. If there is only one Resto Druid in the raid, you are doing the tanks a disservice, IMO, if you assign that tree to raid healing.
• Resto Druids really have to rely on the other raid healers for most of the heavy lifting. If there is a LOT of Raid damage, there isn’t much we can do to help. Obviously that kind of situation is tailor made for a CoH priest or a Resto Shammy. Our HOTs do a great job topping people off and buying some time, but we don’t have a real good way to heal for a lot quickly, especially if the damage is extremely spread out.
• If you care at all about the healing meters, which you shouldn’t, you’ll hate raid healing as a Tree. Your numbers will really look pathetic. More often then not, your wonderful HOTs will get overwritten by the other raid healers. Honestly, though, there’s only two things I care about when healing in a raid: how many people died, and whether we were successful.

Conclusion

So what do I think? Well, I’ll be honest. When I first started raiding, I would get the tiniest bit offended at being assigned to raid healing. To me, that was the RL saying, “I don’t trust you, so I’ll just put you on the raid.” Like everyone who raids, I had worked hard on my gear, stats and abilities. You go into raiding after accomplishing a lot in this game, and raid healing felt like the back seat.  Part of the issue with me personally is that I raid in an alliance, so the RL didn’t know me all that well.

Now I realize that raid healing isn’t necessarily the back seat. The fact is, a lot of healing assignments are dependent on the group composition. If there are two Tree healers, the best spot to stick tree #2 is on the raid. You don’t need two Trees to run HOTs on the tanks, at least not in the encounters I have dealt with thus far.

Being largely assigned as the raid healer has also removed my tunnel vision for the most part. I feel a little more invested in encounters, as I have more freedom as a raid healer. I even spend some time DPSing here and there. In the end, if you have more than one Tree in your raid, then yes, Trees make fine raid healers. If there is only one, though, you’re gimping your group by not taking fully advantage of the Power of Tree by assigning the Resto Druid to the tanks.

Still, I’m just glad I’m raiding!  Thanks for reading!