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.

Random Thoughts

I've had some recent thoughts on becoming a healer and I thought that I would share them. In my previous experience I've been a DPS'er - burning things down with extreme vengeance. I loved it. I love the thrill of the kill. My other toon is a hunter and he can flat out bring the heat. I love my priest for other reasons; he brings the heat but in different ways. He is a caster. He doesn't rely on weapons so much. With him I feel like I'm using much more skill then hiding behind a blazing cannon that wears mail.
I've just embraced the healer role. I've been level 80 for about a week and already have 6-7 epics. Mostly from items I can make through tailoring and AH purshases. I find myself with a new challenge. I'm challenged by the environment constantly with quests and rep grind and now raids. This is different. When I go into a raid or instance I'm trying to keep the group going. It's a different mindset. Instead of just worrying about me and my damage I now need to be concerned with the entire group. The healer and the tank are the lynch pins to the whole group. If the healer goes down the group dies. If the tank goes down the group dies. There is a much more stress but I love it - I feel alive! When you are taking on a boss it's like they look at me and say 'You're goin' down'; I look right back at them and say 'bring it'! I've added Healbot to my UI and I must say that it helps as far as keeping track of multiple targets and healing them quickly but I've yet to run an instance/raid with it just helping guildies with quests.

Northrend Dungeonmaster

My guild put a group together of me, Branard (tank), Paganstix (dps druid), Frosta (hunter) and bloodyhealin' (priest going as shadow) to take on Halls of Stone. I've been in there once regular and once heroic before on my hunter. Frosta had been in there before but didn't really remember it and noone else had been in there. This will be fun. We got in there and Branard absolutely wrecked the place. Pagan's dps has been going up considerably and Frosta was 4 bars away from 79 and Bloody was nuking away. This was a motivated group and looked like one that was ready to run heroics on a regular basis based on the carnage we created. The most challenging fight in there was a fight were a dwarf tries to shut down this security system. Wave after wave of mobs comes out to get you along with lightning from the ceiling. The group was never in any danger as they all remained standing. Not one death. I got a nice pants upgrade which I quickly embroidered with spell power and spirit along with the Halls of Stone achievement. I was one instance away from Northrend Dungeonmaster needing only Occulus. We had gone through H.O.S. so quickly that everyone wanted to do another run.
With a little discussion we decided to go into Occulus. Branard had to leave for a bit and Bloody was suffering from the remnants of a sunburn so we had to start pugging for group slots. The three of us that were left flew over to Nexxus from Ulduar which was a 10 minute flight! Blizzard needs to work on that. There is no reason why I need to watch my priest on a flying mount for that long. When we got out there I knocked out one of my Wyrmrest dailies. Branard ended up coming back and we got one of our guildies with his geared rogue to come in and do some dps. We entered Occulus with only the rogue having been there before. The wreckage that I have come to expect from Branard continued until we reached this mage that gave us this dragon token. You used it to summon a dragon mount. The rest of the instance would require us to fly around these dragons to different platforms to take out the bosses. On one hand this was a pain in the butt but on the other it was certainly different from anything else I had done before. We were doing fine until the boss before the final dragon. There were 3 specific fights and on the last one we wiped. This mage had a nasty frost aura and every now and then would have this explosion go off and if you weren't standing behind a pillar you took on a ton of damage. I had gotten to far away from the group trying to stay out of the frost to heal effectively. We all got back up on that platform and decided to let Branard tank him while walking backwards with me standing behind him as he backed up. Frosta and the rogue died but I kept Pagan and Branard up while walking backwards. I'm truly seeing the value of group heals as opposed to clicking on individual targets and trying to keep everyone up at the same time. After the mage went down we quickly rezed Frosta and the rogue and continued on. Sometime within this fighting Frosta hit 79. We then flew on our dragons to the last boss fight - one gigantic blue dragon. We absoultely owned him! I got the Occulus achievement along with the Northrend Dungeonmaster achievement. I flew back to Dalaran and was able to train for the Wispcloak! It looks really great on!!

Heroic Healz? It Happened.

This was truly a tremendous night of playing. I wanted to knock out the other three instances that I hadn't completed, Halls of Stone, Utgarde Pinnacle and Occulus but couldn't find any interested players. This truly was a strange night of playing. Nobody that I knew was logged on and nobody it seemed was wanting to do an instance. My tank Branard and druid Paganstix and I were all on twiddling our little toon thumbs when we managed to put a group together for Utgarde Pinnacle. Domination doesn't cover what we did to the instance and I received my Utgarde Pinnacle achievement. Cool beans I thought. Then our tank got antsy. He's been wanting to really start doing heroics as a guild ever since he joined up a week or so ago. I wasn't sure that I was ready for a heroic but sometimes you need to step out of your comfort zone. He talked me into it; I was about to enter my first heroic as a healer. We pug'ed another Tauren warrior and an Undead shadow priest. The instance of choice was Violet Hold in Dalaran. A good a place as any to start my heroic pursuits. This definitely kept me on my toes as a healer since the mobs hit harder and had more health. We got down to the last boss, the dragon. It went okay but I couldn't keep them all up. Paganstix and the other warrior went down but Branard our main tank kept going. The shadow priest managed to hang in there as I went down. I healed as fast and often as possible in 'spirit' form and we came within a fingernail of taking the boss down but we wiped. I was in such good spirits because as a first heroic that went very well. With any wipe in Violet Hold you get the extreme pleasure of doing it over again. This time we got down to the that silly dragon and I was ready to go. During the fight I was pulled under the dragon's belly but instead of just running away I would throw a quick renew on Branard and hit a circle of healing and then run! That dragon hit the ground as my Heroic Violet Hold achievement flashed on the screen. I got a nice ring in for my nightly effort but more importantly I held my own in a heroic instance. I'm two instances away from my dungeonmaster achievement. I hit revered rep with Wyrmrest so I get a nice head enchant, new bracers, a 32-slot enchant bag recipe for tailoring and a mace which I think will work for my dps gear. Naxxramus here I come!