Monday (27 Sep) - Desperate Measures

Monday (27 Sep) - Desperate Measures

Philly talked herself into signing up on the Random Dungeon Finder as a healer. She felt she was as prepared as she could be. She knew that priest healing was nothing like druid healing and that she would have to practice to get priest healing patterns ingrained. The best place to practice is in the five man randoms where mistakes can be made without costing us a wipe.

At least that was the idea.

Philly's first random of the day was Halls of Lightning (HoL). This is an Ulduar five man. We had a warrior tank and a mix of DPS including a paladin. Philly was happy to see the paladin, who was quite capable of healing himself if Philly had any trouble.

We worked our way through the trash mobs to the first boss with no problem. The tank was holding aggro fine and the rest of us were not taking much damage. Shields and Flash Heals were pretty much all Philly needed to keep folks going. The first boss, General Bjarngrim, has just one trick, and it can be run away from. Philly used his Prayer of Mending and his more powerful Penance spell to maintain the tank's health and again, Philly had no real trouble.

The second boss is a kind of gauntlet that can be trouble if too many players get Feared. We didn't have a shaman to take care of that with a totem, but Philly put Fear Ward on the tank to keep him in the action. We had no problems bringing down the second boss, Volkhan.

The third boss, Ionar, I don't remember so I think we skipped him. But we ran into our first real trouble working through mobs on the way to the final boss. The tank over-aggroed a bunch of mobs and couldn't keep control of them. Philly went into emergency healing mode, but I felt completely inadequate to the task without all those instant spells that Wild has at his disposal. Philly got Shields on everyone, used all my other spells and spammed flash heal while holding Penance for the tank. DPSers started dying because I had no time to keep anyone alive but the tank and yours truly. There were too many mobs left alive, however, and we wiped.

The coward tank quit the group. The other players said that the tank had taken on too many mobs on a bad pull. No one was mad at him for the bad pull, but we were extremely annoyed that he quit the group. With Wild I can tell whether I made a mistake or if I'd done everything possible to avoid a wipe. With Philly I'm not sure.

We were lucky (well, lucky was a relative term in this case) and got another tank fairly quickly. All we had were some trash mobs and the final boss to deal with. The tank was a death knight named Lichking (with an odd spelling). Takes an ego to name your toon after the most powerful and famous death knight in the game.

We had all just gotten back from the graveyard and Philly had healed and buffed everyone up. I called for a mana break before we started, so I could get a full mana bar, but I didn't get it. The DK tank trotted off and started on the mobs. Philly jumped up with a quarter of my mana and rushed after the tank, but he had gotten so far from us I didn't get there before he died. The pally stepped in and with Philly's help we avoided a wipe.

Philly rezzed the tank and asked him pointedly in party chat to wait for me when I called for mana. We started again, and Philly miscued on a Shield to the tank, drawing aggro. Two mobs that frankly the tank should have picked up turned and attacked Philly instead. I Shielded, Faded and healed, moving toward the tank, who ignored the mobs on me. Philly died. Dang cloth armored squishy. That would be me.

Not two pulls later, the DK tank drew mobs he couldn't maintain aggro on and DPSers started dying. Philly tried to keep up the DK tank but the paladin seemed to be handling the mobs better than the tank. I let the DK die and the pally and Philly finished off the mobs on our own.

The pally had had enough, though. He abandoned the group, and Philly felt like she'd lost her only friend. Another DPSer also quit the group.

The DK tank was still full of energy and raring to go, and after Philly had rezzed him and the one DPS foolish enough to stick around (and what does that say about Philly? Glutton for punishment comes to mind) we gathered two more DPSers and started where we left off.

The final boss was Loken. He has a dastardly ability where he maintains an AoE that does more damage the farther away from him you are. BUT, he also casts Lightning Nova regularly throughout the fight, which does more damage the closer you are to him. For well geared players you can stand close and survive the Lightning Nova. If you aren't that well geared, you have to run in and out to avoid the Nova while staying close to mitigate the AoE. We really sucked at doing that. Everyone in the raid was taking all kinds of damage and Philly could not keep up. We wiped.

As we rezzed and flew back from the graveyard, Philly asked if her healing just sucked or if there was some other issue. Healers usually do get blamed, but no one thought I should have been able to heal through that barrage. The DPSers needed to do a better job of positioning and moving to reduce the incoming damage. For Philly, the cast time of her "fast" spell, Flash Heal, was so frustratingly long she wanted to scream. Our tank irritated Philly further when he waited to be rezzed instead of releasing to the graveyard like the rest of us did. Ego.

We tried a second time. All three DPSers eventually died. There was a moment when Philly thought, here we go again, but then decided that if she was going down she was going down swinging. She kept up the healing, daring that DK to finish the job. Loken died.

Philly got her badges. Two frost badges for the first random of the day, and four triumph badges for boss kills. She needs thirteen more triumph badges to buy that bow.

It was a painful start as a healer in random dungeons. Philly did 1446 hps, and I have no idea whether that is good or bad in a five man.

One last tidbit from the HoL run. After we had downed Loken Philly again asked about her healing. One of the two hunters in the group said, "You were fine. We just thought you hated hunters." That got a laugh and raised Philly's spirits.

Monday Night

Our Monday night crew was at full power and then some. We got started earlier than usual, and we also had a guest join the regulars. The regulars - Ando, Lao, and EZ - decided that it was time to give our Alliance cousins a night of fun. We switched toons, bringing Sin (warlock), UB (priest), and Java (paladin). Sin and Java were level 20 and UB level 25. Ideally, our team would have sorted out with Sin DPSing, UB healing, and Java tanking. But the Wild family and our alliance cousins have never, ever, tanked on any toon on any class. It's a role we always run screaming from. That was the case with Java as well. Don't know how, don't want to know how, hate the idea kind of a thing. Java would DPS.

The three of us grouped up and joined the dungeon finder. We waited probably ten minutes and still no dungeon. Java felt a little bad that because I can't tank we had to wait so long for a tank. We caught a break, though, when a friend who has a toon in our allie guild had time to join us. She brought her own paladin, a level 26 who could tank, Esor.

Esor joined our group and we again turned to the dungeon finder. While this was going on Java was walking through his spells, buffs, etc, re-remembering what a paladin is supposed to do. There's been too many toons in too short a time. In addition to druid Wild, priest Philly is trying to improve her healing spec, hunter Mery has gotten a lot of time the past couple weeks, shaman JB wanted time to learn to heal, the other shaman EZ got some dungeon action, and now paladin Java was front and center. And I am still being plagued with user interface problems from that terrible and lamented decision to use Blizzard's repair tool.

The UI issue manifested itself for Java by refusing to show what buffs he cast on himself and the group. It was hard enough getting Java's three buffs - Wisdom, Might, and Kings - straight in his head. Sin gently reminded Java that the attack power from Might (which is what Java cast on him) wouldn't help him much and could he please have the Wisdom buff instead. With another pally in the raid I wasn't sure what buffs I should be doing, either. Paladin buffs only last ten minutes, and with my UI problems I couldn't see when they expired.

I've also been taking time to establish better keyboard shortcuts for melee DPS toons. Mouseover keys for healing and in part even for ranged DPS have worked well for me, but for melee toons I really need to be using the keyboard to cast spells and abilities in order to maneuver fast in close quarters combat. EZ has a setup now that I like and that she's gotten enough game time to practice and tweak. I hadn't gotten to Java, yet, so for the most part I was clicking on buttons to cast spells and abilities, and it just doesn't work as well.

Ok, so all of the above is my lame excuse for Java's less than stellar performance when the dungeon finder offered our group Blackfathom Deeps (BFD), a mid-level 20s dungeon with an extensive, partially submerged cave system.

Esor led the way, and at level 25 she was higher level than anything else in BFD. With healing help from UB Esor was rarely in trouble no matter how many mobs ganged up on her. Java followed on her heels and helped kill whatever she was targeting, with Sin laying on the warlocky AoEs and DoTs. The one outsider DPS who joined us to get us to five was pretty much just along for the ride, although the shaman we had was pretty good.

We battered our way through BFD three times, and collected an immense amount of varying gear and junk. There was so much we had to break after the first two runs so we could hearth back to a city and clear our bags. At the end of BFD there is an npc that will teleport players to Darnassus. Java took that teleport; but once there, I realized that I had no idea where anything was in Darnassus. Java took longer than everyone else to clear his bags, get his talents updated (from leveling) and turn in a quest. Java would have preferred Exodar, which while confusing, he has a passing familiarity with.

Despite all of Java's mostly self inflicted issues the night was a resounding success. Both Java and Sin leveled four times, from level 20 to level 24. UB leveled at least once, maybe twice. Even Esor leveled to 26.

The DPS went like this (overall for all three runs):
Esor - 84 DPS, 24.7% damage
Sin - 82 DPS, 24.2%
Java - 46 DPS, 13.4% (Sigh)

Gear-wise, Java was so awash with stuff it took half an hour to sort it all out. It was hard to know what to "need" versus "greed" when I quickly lost track of what I'd already won. I may have missed an item or two that Java could have used, but Java had plenty of upgrades to be thankful for. I hope Sin and the others got some loot as well.

Javagot upgrades to his belt, gloves, and cape from BFD. Java also wound up with FIVE weapons from BFD, some one handed and some two-handed. The best of the bunch were two two-handed weapons, a sword and an axe. The sword [Strike of the Hydra] from the final boss, requires level 25 to equip, so Java will have to hold on to that for one more level. The axe [Reef Axe] was Java's best upgrade on the night, and Java is anxious to get it enchanted and ready to wield. Java will have to learn how to use an axe, though, and for that he'll have to make a trip to Ironforge where the trainer is.