Shifting Out

With some drama from my guild and an unknown kick out of it, I’m thinking that I want to start over on a new server and play more casually than before. I haven’t been playing much (hence the lack of updates) because patch 2.4 really killed my mood for it.

So yes, I’m thinking about which server to join and if I still want to play.

T5 shoulders. Ohhhh yea. /orgasm

In other news, this feels crazy. I didn’t have to pot/flask/food/oil.. because I was afraid of it seeming like I wasn’t doing anything. I honestly couldn’t spend my mana fast enough.

I was reading an article about what other people bring to raids and thought about it for myself as a restoration druid.

I can honestly say, I don’t carry as much as they do. And it really depends on the scale of the raid. Obviously, for 25 mans, I’m going to carry more Wild Quillvine to buff everyone since almost next to always, I’m the only buffing druid around. >.<

For Karazhan, I make sure that I have at least a stack. If I’m anywhere less than a stack of Wild Quillvine, I go buy 20. For ZA, I carry more since we’re still learning encounters. So I carry around 40 to start but then there’s a reagent vendor at the camp that I can always buy from.

For bigger scale raids, I always come prepared with 80-100 Wild Quillvine. I think that’s about the only reagent that I become most concerned about.

I always have a stack of seeds for battle rezzing purposes. I highly doubt that I’ll go through a stack in one raid so I refresh my supply as necessary but carry no more than a stack and no less than 10.

I don’t use elixirs for Karazhan anymore unless I’m trying to find out my “buffed” stats. Otherwise, no flasks for me. For 25 mans/ZA/newer encounters, I carry around 20 elixirs of healing power, 20 golden fish sticks, 1 superior mana oil, 20 mana regen food, and at least 50-70 super mana potions. On top of that, I have potions that I always have in my bag such as Mad Alchemist Potions which I used more often than Super Mana Potions. If I know the encounter, that’s about all I use. I usually have a stock of ~100 Mad Alchemist Potions.

Farming for raids isn’t hard for me. I have friends/guildies that can make me oils. I can cook food on my own. And I’m an herby/alchy so I make my own potions/flasks as necessary.

And I think what most healers don’t do, is carry all their past healing trinkets/gear with them. Yes, I really carry everything I’ve ever equipped (blues and higher) with me to raid. I have my spirit pieces that I can swap around, my trinkets of various effects, mana regen pieces, pvp pieces sometimes if I know I’ll need more stamina (rarely).

Yup, I’m never unprepared for a raid so long as it’s not one of those “log on immediate summon and start” things. Usually if I’m being rushed into an instance, I’m already parked in Shattrath and I just grab things from my bank.

Playing with a X-Box 360 controller seems more difficult than playing with a keyboard.

I wonder if anyone actually does and how much of adjustment they’d have to go through to react during boss fights fast enough.

# Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control. # Mangle (Bear) now properly triggers a 1.5 second global cooldown, increased from 1.0 second.

They nerfed the right part of lifebloom now. No more PvE nerfings! Yay!

Today I went in with a former guildie’s guild as a chance to learn the fights and so on so forth.

Did pretty well, I think. I was impressed because even though some of the dps really sucked, we still had minimal wipes which was only on Tidewalker.

Happy tree here. Though I think some of the other trees were kinda fails. I ranked about 2-4th on healing so I guess I’m not half bad. I got moved from raid healing to MT healing which was pretty nice unlike the first fight where I was put on raid healing which kind of sucked because it’s boring but necessary. I take it as a spot where it’s the “You’re not good enough to MT heal” kinda thing.

Though I must say, we had a geared out rogue from the top guild on the server.. as you will probably notice from my damage meters.

Here are some screenshots.

Today, I joined a new arena 3v3 team with 2 guildies. At first, it was myself, resto shaman and warlock. Then it changed to the hunter instead of the warlock.

We’re so bad but it’s the “new team” bad and not the “we suck” bad.

I ended up having to tank a rogue and between hots and barkskin and bear form, they really can’t hurt me all that much. Nature’s Grasp also came into play. A lot of time, Nature’s Grasp would then be trinketed and then I popped my NS+Root on the rogue which gave me some time to travel form away, heal, and recast barkskin before he catches up. If I had time after getting myself healthy again, I would start a cyclone and run away again, then started roots and rinse and repeat. Usually the kiting worked like that and diminishing returns didn’t affect me too bad unless the rogue pops sprint in which I just keep travel forming away or if need be, cat form -> dash.

Can’t say our first week went well but we had fun which was the whole point. The two healer-one dps can be frustrating to the opposing team because there’s been some matches where they just can’t out damage two healers. Shaman has big heals and I got effective hots. There’s no way to really interrupt 90% of my spells and I just have so many tricks, I admit, it’s wonderful.

In patch 2.4, they changed the way spirit worked. Now, the more intellect you have, you will gain more mana per point of spirit.

Here is how my mana regen has changed from 2.3 to 2.4. All I have to say, is … wow.

2.3

2.4

Blizzard is giving Lifebloom a nerf of about 8-10%.

Right now, my lifebloom ticks for about 880. I think (and I will test this out on PTR) that after 2.4, it’ll be ticking for about 800ish but still healing for the same amount if I let it bloom (which I rarely do).

The bloom is more of a “I’m silenced and can’t refresh” moment or a “Need to heal the raid to full and I can’t refresh or someone will die” moment.

While I am fond of rolling Lifebloom, I’m pretty sure that having an adaptive playstyle can really benefit here. Perhaps one day, rolling lifeblooms won’t be the most efficient way to heal (/cry). But we do have other spells we can use. We do have other rotations we can think of to maximize our healing.

We all <3 our lifebloom.

Yes, I’m dwelling on a small nerf too.

After doing a bit more alchemy/herbalism, I actually ran out of room in my bank which forced me to make a bank toon. I don’t know if everyone is this anal about their bank but…

Mine is really organized.

So my hunter is now my meth lab, my druid is my source and my banker is the stash. It’s like my own little WoW drug farm right?