Grumpy Old Priest

Vid are not the Shadows!

2008-04-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

Yeah, me and shadow never last, I just don't like it. I actually have a harder time soloing as shadow as I do holy/disc. To all those shadow priesties out there, I salute you, cause I won't do it.

So back to business as usual. Nothing really to do, put some finishing touches on my Hunter Wiltfang. He's about as good as it's going to get before 25 mans and 2.4 badge gear so... it's pally time /hammeroflawldance

Vid are the Shadows!

2008-04-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

I am soooo bored with my main character Vidarius. Like a lot, lot. So bored that I specced Raid Shadow. I don't bother with PvP specs because I just don't care enough.

But you is teh Squishbot! Where will I go for healy goodness?

I have every piece of heal gear imaginable with the exception of the new badge gear for Kara and Heroics (unfortunately all my guild runs, ZA works, but healing in there sucks like a two dollar hooker at happy hour to borrow a phrase from my favorite wrog) So healing as shadow just requires some more attention and mana conservation.

I have the heal gear, what I don't have is the shadow gear. I have a paltry 740 +shadow dmg, even if I'm at the hit cap (For more on this see Spicytuna's breakdown of the hit cap http://spicytunas.wordpress.com/2008/01/31/spellhit/).

Is it gonna make things a pain in the butt for a guild that tends to be healer-light anyways? Perhaps. Am I gonna be stuck healing as a shadow priest a lot of the time? You bet your arse I will. But you have to do whatever stops the boredom.

I have been running through Kara without any foreseeable goal for far too long now; I dig my guildies, they rock; we have a solid core of 15-ish people who know what they're doing but have a great deal of scheduling issues and we try to work around it. We also have about 40 tards who wouldn't know the business end of a Wolfslayer's Rifle if they were being beaten over the head with it. I'll probably spend half my time in vent chastising their goofy asses as usual, but at least I'll have a reason not to heal them /malevolentgrin.

Time Away

2008-04-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

School are the suck, and last week it was especially bad; research presentations, assignments and insipid faculty, oh my. Thus no time to write about the issues that no one cares about. But I'm back now; try to contain your excitement, I know it's difficult. Now I just have to figure out something to write about ... Sh!t.

I Can Haz Instanz?

2008-03-27T00:51:00.000-07:00

When everyone starts healing they suck. Like a lot. A lot lot. You will probably freak out, you will more than likely overheal, you will go oom and you will die, not necessarily in that order.

So whaddya need to do? Not freak out. End of story /lessonover /demandspayment ... ok, maybe there's more to it than that.

First thing is to wait, if you start spamming quick heals .5 seconds after the start of a pull you are going to pull aggro and die. So wait. I know it's hard, people are losing health, you're going into cardiac arrest, just chill. Tank reaches 70-75% health, start a "long bomb" (whatever your big heal may be). If you be a tree druid in the later levels you can start that regrowth a bit later cause it be quicker and properly specced will probably crit, thus the aggroes. At this point you evaluate; the heal lands and your tank is now at: A. The same level of health or above; B. Less than 50% health; C. Dead.

Special Note to Priests and Shaman for da' later levels: The aggro component of Prayer of Mending and Earth Shield is not attributed to the healer, but to the person healed, so you can start that baby off from the get go (and I suggest you do) and re-up it on the tank whenever you can

Special-er Note to Priests: For tanks that haz anger issues aka "Rage" Power Word: Shield = teh noes. Damage they take generates rage which translates into potential aggro for them, and nothing pisses them off more then a Power Word: Shield fuggering that up. If things look really dire mid-fight, like they've been affected by something that lessens healing and you can't keep up, you do it no matter what the hell they say.

SO what do you do?
Situation A: Awesome, you haz a real tank, wait a sec and start yourself another long bomb. Druids can just finish HoT'ing the tank up. (Rejuvination, Lifebloom, etc)
Situation B: Eh, your tank maybe be squishy or the pull may be big, throw out a quick heal or two until they're back to 60% or so and start up a long bomb if the situation doesn't look deadly.
Situation C: Your tank is nearly as squishy as you if not squishier. Get out, Get out now

What about the DPS? Can't just let them die can you? Maybe if they annoy you, but you gotta at least make it look like you're trying. /shiftyeyes

Quick question: Why is the DPSer taking damage?
1. Did he/she get antsy/st00pid and pull the group themselves?
2. Did he/she start attacking .01 seconds after tank and is continuing to go apesh!t?
3. Is he/she attacking the wrong target?
4. Did he/she wait 3-4 seconds like a good lil' minion of doom and the tank can't hold aggro off someone swinging a wet paper bag at the mob?
5. Was he/she trying to keep something under crowd control and it resisted/got out on him/her?
6. Something unavoidable like sudden AoE?

These don't all require their own strategy, just allows you to split them into categories.

1-3 are Dipshit DPS, they need a good /rolledupnewpaper, but for now hopefully they're doing enough damage to warrant the mana output. Stick to instant casts and quick heals when necessary, and do your best to weave them in between tank heals. So after a good long bomb on the tank toss them an instant or a quick heal and then go straight back to the tank, maybe tossing an instant or quick on him/her to make up for the lost time if he's/she's below that 50% mark.

What about 4-6? They be the good guys/gals. You want them alive because they aren't making your job a pain in the ass, and that's about as much as you can ask most of the time. They deserve a little more spammination than the others, but if you have to throw more than a quick or two and an instant they're doing something wrong, or something in and of itself is wrong.

So whaddya do if you're constantly in situations B,1, 2 and 3? Ya get good or ya get gone. End of story. If you wanna learn to heal, these situations (as much as they will piss you off) will teach you a lot about what to do when sh!t hits the fan. So if you're starting a new healer, learn to use the LFG tool and get yourself in as many PUGs (Pick Up Groups) as possible. You'll spend a lot of time frustrated to start off with, but eventually what to do and when to do it will become as natural as breathing. And if you can do both the healing and the breathing thing at the same time you are golden.

Now does this mean you should always stick with a terrible group for the "learning experience?" Fawk noes! If the tank is the squishiest of squishbots and/or the DPS can't manage their threat worth a damn, tell them so and GTFO, Hearthing whenever possible for comedic/dramatic effect.

/lessonover /demandspayment ... /tapsfoot ... fine

Squishbots, Roll Out!

PvP: The love-hate relationship

2008-03-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

PvP for healers can be a great deal of fun, it can also suck more than a high school cheerleader on a Friday night after a bottle of crack daniels.

There is a lot of variety in what you're doing. Can you heal yourself without letting someone else die? Can you take the time to heal DPS A without losing DPS B? Can you heal A and B while under fire from a hordie and not dying yourself? It's an adrenaline rush and the perfect occupation for one with a deathwish. If you're a squishbot like myself, the answer to that last question is more than likely no btw.

Nukeage. One word, two syllables. Learn it, hate it, embrace it because there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. You have to survive, and chances are you'll have to do it yourself, most of the time dps would rather bitch about heals rather than spend 10 seconds keeping said heals alive. Question is how do you stay alive? The answer: Instant Casts!!!111oneone11!! /trumpetfanfare Why instant casts? Cause they can'ts be interrupteded, and if you get a school shutdown(i.e. Kick, Pummel, Earth Shock, Counterspell, Spell Lock) during a spell with cast time you are gonna die,

Lets break it down by class:

Squishbot! aka Priest: You are in luck, to offset our inherent squishiness we has some tasty instant casts. Put them up in this order and you ought to survive a few more seconds at least.
-Psychic Scream makes things run away... maybe, unless they have the PvP trinket, or are undead, or a warrior, or resist or have a fear ward, or don't feel like it /yay ... kinda
-Prayer of Mending is quite possibly the most useful tool ever, a heal that waits till something swats you to do its job, Fantastic! Plus it might bounce to someone nearby that could use it. Shazzam, nuff said.
-Power Word: Shield means not taking damage, it's instant, awesomesauce
-Renew is your last instant cast unless you are a dorf (like me /preen) or a human, if you've taken any damage before the shield it'll take care of a bit of it, and it's more healing that wrog/MS warrior/minion of doom will have to work through
-Time to pull out the racials, not race card /backoffJesse, racials. You've been playing long enough to know what they are, use them. If not I will explain more later.
-After all this it's time to take the risk of casting if you're still under fire, Flash and Binding heal /gogo! and pray that shield or prayer of mending comes back up soon. Rinse and repeat and hope to dear god you don't go oom.

Tree! aka Druid: You has the instant casts. You haz Tree form, which decreases damage taken, but slows you down, so if you can't get away it's great, if you can /Fthat! humanoid and travelform all the way.
-Lifebloom, the sooner it goes up, the sooner that final heal goes off and the longer you get that HoT
-Rejuvenation is awesome, renew on crack /jealousy
-Moar Lifebloom! Strengthen that HoT. Doo Eet
-Swiftmend to get the direct heal off the Rejuv without casting yay!
-Reup rejuv, really, you know you want to
-Natures Switness: Use it on a healing touch, but save this because two instants =2 gcds which = moar time getting whacked
-Risk time: you can either go bear and bash and try for a direct heal, go travel form and try to get away to use a direct heal, or you can just sit there and try to heal through and hope for no interrupts.
-Now you have to use Regrowth or go for the Oh Sh!t button aka Tranquility
- Hope something else is hitting what's hitting you and spam moonfire /gogo

Shamamanamans or Shaman if you prefer: Earth Shield, basically the crack baby of Prayer of Mending and Power Word : Shield, we hates you /shakingfist and Totemz to boot /sulk
-Earthshield: put this on yourself and you've given yourself a little while in which to get away.
-FRAWSTSHAWK!!11oneone1!!: Run Forest Run!
-Earthbind for more slowy goodness
-Kite that jerk like Ben Franklin in a thunderstorm
-When you have to make a stand start off with Healing Stream, Grounding, Searing, and Tremor, substitute when applicable for Earth and Air depending on what you're facing. Switch to Mana Tide and Mana Stream when you encounter mana drain effects or just get low
-If it's desperate use your Elementals if you can
-Racials may or not be applicable, use your best judgement
-Natures Swiftness is your oh Sh!t button, save it till you've got no other choice
-Cast time, ick. Stick with lesser healing wave, trolls can use beserking to speed it up a bit, thats about it. Good Luck and Kite, Kite Kite

Plateface or Paladins or as I prefer "tasty Priest snacks": PvP used to be your bag, you guys still survive a bit, but Bubble being dispellable takes the wind out of your sail a bit eh?
-You haz no instant casts besides bubbles /cry
-Highspeed Big heals and super efficient 1.5 sec heals to boot. The envy of instance healers, not of PvP healers, but they help
-Flash your face off and bubble as soon as you can and hope that a priest like me doesn't come along and tear you a new one
-Under the bubble drop those long bombs and hope they come fast enough
-You can run! ... sorta. Blessing of Freedom will let you run like a girl for 15 seconds before letting those mean ole dpsers slow you down again
-You can fight back! ... kinda. Holy Shock and Hammer of Wrath can knock out a DPS with low health, but you have to get lucky
-Hammer of Justice /shazzam ... /resistedagainwtf? My buddy is a holy pally and he swears this spell has a 400% resist chance
-You can melee, as silly as it sounds, Seal of Justice has a Stun proc that goes off fairly often, give that maces wrog a taste of his own medicine. /mmmm schnosberries
-That's kinda it, you get interrupted/locked and you are boned, also beware the manaburn! Priests be 3v1l, I knows I am one.

That, so far, is the Healers PvP Compendium according to Vid. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about. You tell me.

I is priest, hear me squish!

2008-03-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

This blog used to be for a combination of things, but I was feeling capricious and nuked the whole thing and started over. /whocares

I play World of Warcraft and furthermore my first character was and is a healing priest. So I am going to join the army of WoWbloggers to waste as much time not doing coursework as possible.

For the time being priests are kinda outmoded outside of PvP, I don't mind, pissing of hordies and pissing off raid mobs are pretty much the same. Bottom line: I will die, I will make a delightful "squish" noise and I will make one of those purty angel thingies that sit like a sack of bricks because no one is in range to heal. /nodifference

I have a multitude of characters besides the squishbot: a 70 hunter and several lowbies that I play in tandem with my girlie Chant (you'll see a link to her blog at the bottom of the page). And I'm sure they'll be drug into the rants ... I mean posts at some point, as well as the girlie and I's arena exploits, and by exploits I mean getting smashed to very tiny bits.

Enjoy! Or not, as if I gave a damn.