First Naxx 25-Man Run

Yes I did hear correctly. This was going to be my first 25-man Naxx run as a healer! Unbelievable. We absloutely wrecked the spider wing. It helped that we had a 10 man run the night earlier. We knew what to do and what to expect - it was just a little harder. I was healing main tank and some raid during the run. It was a ton of fun. We managed to knock out the spider wing and the plague quarter and I did end up getting a nice glove upgrade. I had rolled on 5 different items in there and only one the item that nobody else rolled on. I kept rolling numbers like 1 and 4 and 15. I think that I went 1 for 5 on the rolls. I also received the Heroic: The Plague Quarter achievement for my first time through. We ended up getting hung up on Patchwerk and stopped by we had a blast with the first two wings. I'm feeling VERY good as a healer and my role in the raid community.

First Naxx 10-Man Run

After getting the Explore Icecrown achievement I got a whisper from my guild leader. I couldn't believe what he was telling me. We were going to be going into a 10-man Naxx run. Yes, it happened. My first Naxx run as a healer. My guild hooked up with another guild who has been raiding Naxx for some time and knew the fights very well. It didn't matter how bad the run went, how many deaths and raid wipes there were; they were in for the long haul to teach us the fights and help get us geared! Finally it was happening; I was making my way into Naxx. This would be the first step into a brand new healing world. I pulled main tank heal duty and backup group heals when I could do them. I didn't do to bad at all. It was brutal and ugly for the most part and we managed to just get the arachnid wing done but it was a learning experience. That was the most fun in WOW in some time. I got a cool ring upgrade and the 25 Emblems of Heroism achievement. As we were calling it a night I thought that I heard someone mention a 25-man Naxx run for tomorrow? Is it possible?

Back In The Saddle

I got bored with WOW. I know that's a blasphemy but it's true. I've been grinding dailies and failing (in my mind) as a healer. I finally got back on after about a week off and I got into some groups today and actually healed well. I think I just need a few runs that don't melt to feel like I know what I'm doing. As you know, this whole healing gig is a new thing for me. I completed a heroic Violet Hold and a heroic Nexxus. There were very few deaths and the group worked well together. I earned my Wyrmrest Exalted status (and achievement) and went and got the epic boots upgrade along with the 'Reins of the Red Drake'! Now I just have to finish getting the gold for the epic flying. I'm almost there. I can't wait to take to the skies on my very hard earned drake!

I'm Not Sure That I Should Be Healing Afterall.

This was an epic fail night. The guild whispered me when I logged in last night and wanted to go do an older instance, Sunwell. I was just getting back into playing after all of my internet issues and the internet technician literally just left the house. We went in there after taking awhile to form a group. I was tasked with keeping the Tank alive. After multiple tries and multiple wipes we called it. We had not done very well and not even really gotten out of the first room. My healing confidence is not at an all time high. I know that groups can make the raid/instance good or bad but when people are dying I take it personally. Maybe I'm not cut out to heal after all. I've tried different styles of healing, different spells, insant heals, group heals, different UI's, I've combed the internet looking for tips and tricks and I'm not sure that it's doing any good. Maybe I'll just go back to 'face-melter' and just live with the expectation that I may never see Nax. Shadow priests aren't really in high demand, at least not on my Kul Tiras server. :(

Naxx Run? Sort Of.....

I was minding my own business running my dailies when Pottymouth asked if I wanted to get into a Naxx group he had just gotten into. It was going to be a 25-man run. I was just about to start helping my brother with one of his alts when the whisper came through. I thought, 'I'm ready! Let's do this!'. This would be the cloth wearing freak's first foray into Naxx. They wanted me to go in as shadow and do some dps. I've been wanting to get Mad out of the healing box so I joined up. I started thinking of the epic loot that I now had a chance to get. I asked my brother if he wanted to go which he did so he went and dusted off his hunter, Zumbo. It took awhile to get everyone in there but we eventually got started. I started to notice some pretty heavy lag when hitting my spell buttons. Pottymouth started to mention something about having lag issues too. Since we were playing off the same network I figured there might be a network issue. We got to the first boss and I got a new epic wand! This is going to be an awesome night! First boss, already epic loot! Zumbo got two epic pieces!
Then I got disconnected, then I logged in, then I disconnected, then I logged in.......this went on for the better part of 30 minutes. My only thought was 'why now?'. This was the group that I had been waiting to get into for a very long time and network lag was going to take it away. Take it away it did. Potty whispered to the raid leader that we were going to restart our router/hub/computers and be right back. That solved the problem for about 10 minutes before the connection went down again and the ISP was down for about 20 minutes. It wasn't our network at all; it was the connection. It never goes down; it always works - until you want to get into a rare Naxx run. I was so mad and disappointed that I couldn't see straight. When we finally got logged back in we had been kicked from the group but managed to get reinvited. We got to the instructor boss fight and wiped twice so people started to leave the raid; it fell apart quickly. That was it. My Naxx run was over. I wanted to punch the wall or tear something in half I was so mad. I spent most of my night dinking around with an internet connection. I finished up my Wyrmrest dailies and called it a night. 6K until 'exalted' with Wyrmrest..... /sigh

Can You Heal TOO Much?

I got a call from Pottymouth (warlock) asking to come and run a guild heroic. Apparently two groups were heading out to take on Heroic Nexxus and I was needed to heal. I love being in a guild that actually NEEDS me. That is a post for another day. We went in with me, potty, pagan (druid dps), frosta (hunter) and branard tanking. We did pretty well. Branard is flat out getting scary as a tank. I know that I've mentioned it before but the guy is good. We wiped 4 times before we were done mostly getting hung up on this one boss that is a big elemental. He sent these rifts out that we weren't dealing with right away and I was getting pounded on and of couse died. We put him on hold and moved along to the last boss who is a female blue dragon. Apparently Malygos has a thing for female blue dragons. Anyway, we handled her without much of a fuss losing Potty and Frosta in the fight. We went back to the elemental boss and it took just under 5 minutes to take him out but take him out we did. I received the Heroic: Nexxus achievement as well as a pants upgrade and a 'frozen orb' and a nice JC recipe. All of the dps players wanted to know what recount said there dps was. I was kind of curious on what it said the healing was. Come to find out I'm guilty of 'overhealing'. I've always had this opinion that if the mob dies and we don't then we're good to go. As I started thinking back to some of the longer fights my mana was getting a little low where I either had to throw out my shadowfiend or drink a quick mana potion to get my mana pool up.
Part of it I believe is still my healing learning curve and part of it can be that the gear is still in need of improveing. One wipe I think was caused because I was actually trying not to overheal instead of focusing on keeping Branard standing. I found myself doing some research on the 'overhealing' topic in other priest blogs. I need to become more efficient with the mana that I have and more selective with my heals. At this point I put a 'prayer of mending' on the tank and when he first hits the mob I put a 'renew' on him. It doesn't take very long before the POM is bouncing around and the renew is keeping him topped off. With mobs that hit hard for more damage I'm usually throwing a 'flash heal' and throwing another POM and trying to anticipate the size of the next damage hit. Will it be a flash heal or a greater heal? I usually hit the tank with a renew and a pom when the cooldowns fade. When the group is taking damage I usually hit the 'circle of healing' button along with a renew here and there. In desperate situations I have my own direct heal and a 'praying of healing' for the group and 'spirit' for the tank but I've learned that POH is a mana hog. It's expensive mana-wise. There do seem to be quite a few fights were there is a lot of aoe damage so other than COH and POH I'm not sure what to do with the group. I know the heals, timing and mana regen will come with experience and experimentation but I do seem to be allowing to many deaths.

How Many Times Can A Mage Die?

This was one of those playing nights when things started off well but finished brutally. I decided that it was time to start focusing on more heroic runs as well as my daily batch of daily quests. According to an amazing website, Be Imba it said that I should be able to handle instances beyond heroic Naxxramas. Me, my other priest and fellow follower of light Bloodyhealin going as shadow, Paganstix our dps druid going in to tank, Pottymouth our undead warlock and an old friend of mine Deb running her mage Cyrenitee. We got to the instance and went to work. We quickly found out that Pottymouth was a dps machine and kept ripping aggro away from our druid Pagan. Potty wasn't running a threat meter so he had no idea what the threat level he was causing. Pagan couldn't hold the aggro and potty couldn't help but rip it away from him and we wiped once or twice. Potty and I had to go do something in real life so we called it, said our good byes and hoped to get back to the run.

An hour later we were back trying to put the group back together. We brought in an outside player to be the tank and let Pagan run as his natural dps'ing self. Our tank was an undead death knight. My old friend Deb came back with her warlock Wiccad. Our group was me, our dps druid Pagan, our pug tank, and Potty and Wiccad as warlocks. This will be great I thought. It was. We blew through the instance with a death here and there but for the most part it went well. I received the '50 Stone Keeper Shards' achievement. I also got a nice epic bracer for my face melty spec. We decided to keep the party going and do the heroic daily: Halls of Lightning. Pagan bowed out of this run and we brought in another old friend of mine Frank running his mage, Fact.

We went into the instance and it was disastrous from the beginning. This DK tank thought apparently thought that he could aggro the entire instance and just keep on going. He never waited for the casters (which all of us were other than him) to mana up or to be 'ready'. Fights would start and I would be at 1/4 mana. We died a lot. My new found healing confidence was now lost as I kept thinking it was me. It may have been a little bit but it was brutal. We got passed the first boss okay but we must have wiped 4 times before the 2nd boss. When we got to the 2nd boss we wiped once but got him on the 2nd try and received a 'Shatter Resistant' achievement. We continued to die and wipe at least 3 more times on the way to the 3rd boss which went down without much trouble. Going on to the last boss we must have died and wiped another 3 times at least on our way there. As soon as I would get the group standing back up it seemed like the mage Fact would die over and over and over. At one point I was putting 'renews' on him to try and keep him up before the fights started. It didn't work. I even apologized at one point for him dieing so often. The mobs kept throwing these spears at us and taking Fact and I out causing the wipes. I was a part of the worst run of my wow playing career. It was that bad. This was the worst tank that I have ever been associated with. Fact died so many times that I actually lost count.

We finally got to the last boss and took him down within 2 minutes so I received the 'Timely Death' achievement along with the 'Heroic: Halls of Lightning' achievement. I was so physically and mentally exhausted when I turned in the quest that there was no chance of continuing to play. Fact and Wiccad logged out as soon as we came through the other side of the Dalaran portal that Fact left for us. I was never so happy to log out of the game. I went to sleep that night thinking that I had a lot of learning to do.

It's Just A Flesh Wound

Yes, this is an actual achievement.

This is an Argent tournament quest for becoming a 'champion' and fighting the Black Knight. After you kill him in the ring of champions you receive the 'It's Just A Flesh Wound' achievement. This is in reference to the scene in the Monty Python movie 'The quest for the Holy Grail' when king arthur fights the black knight. As Arthur proceeds to cut off both arms and legs of the black knight and walk by him to cross the bridge the black knight still wants to fight. King arthur tells the black knight that he has been defeated and the knight says 'it's just a flesh wound'. Classic quest, classic movie! Click here for battle scene!!

Champion of Sen'Jin

I've been casually banging out Argent tournament quests for the past week and I received the 'Champion of Sen'Jin' achievement. I was having trouble getting the whole jousting thing down but at least I'm feeling competant at it now. This is a pretty fun quest line. When I gain badges now from the argent quests they will eventually net me gear just like the other badges from raids/instances.
I've been slowly picking at Mad's stats and gear and feel like he's coming along nicely. This character is fun. The game has opened up for me again. My hunter was getting a little stale but I have found the cure.