Tight-Knit Group. ^.^

Finally, some uplifting post material!  The last time Fallenjack and Omnitek and I ran dungeons together, I was feeling a bit daunted, and by the time Monday rolled around, I had not had time to look through the boss fights for healing-specific tactics, but I figured, "meh, how bad could it be," and off we went to knock out the weekly guild achievements.

Blackrock Caverns:  This one, having done it before as a healer a couple times now, was fine.  However, one of the first things we did when we got in was to pull too many groups around Rom'ogg Bonecrusher, and then he walked into our little skirmish.  Despite our GM's order of "run out of the instance, NOW," neither Omni or I made any definite movement to follow such an order.  Amidst white-knuckled heals, I told him, "hell no, I want to see if we can get through this."  It was a testament to our growing dynamic as a group, and sure enough, things were taken care of.  If I remember correctly, I did lose a DK on that fight, but that was because he didn't DPS the chains.  Can't save people from themselves

Vortex Pinnacle:  As a Retribution Paladin, VP is one of those instances that I could waltz through and feel okay about it.  Of course, when you aren't in decent gear and playing a different spec, it's a completely different situation.  This one went all right, though I did lose a couple people due to massive spike damage.  Gotta get quicker on the cool-down reaction time.

Stonecore:  This one was pretty smooth, except for one little teensy-weensy-little-GINORMOUS mess toward the middle.  o.o  I know how tough this dungeon was when it first came out, and even now, if you don't watch yourself, it can go to hell in a hand basket quite quickly.  So what happens?  In the corridor before Ozruk, we started to pull one group at a time, eliminating the mobs that would be major problems first, etc...  I swear that one of the PUGs we had was just in a hurry.  Before I knew it, another group was pulled.  And ANOTHER.  And what seemed like ANOTHER...  Well, running out certainly wasn't an option here, and staying true to my ballsy stance earlier, I tried to quickly organize things in my head: keep the tank up, keep the higher DPS up, stay out of the fire.  What seemed like forever passed as I clicked furiously.  My brilliant Warlock was spot on with banishing where he could and DPSing like a demon, and my tank was great, especially with pulling the casters off me...  Then, oh NO...  For once, I was truly OOM (out of mana), and this after blowing any cool-down that would regenerate mana...  I even busted out band-aids for the last few moments of the fight (betcha don't think First Aid is a useless skill now, huh?).  O.o'  All of us were amazed that we all managed to live through that seemingly catastrophic chain of events, and to quote the Shaman we had in group, "well, that certainly woke me up."

As for other more exciting stuffs, Patch 4.2: Firelands hit today!  I must say that I needed a tissue or three while doing the first line of quests with Thrall & Aggra.  I won't ruin it for anyone who hasn't gotten to do it yet, I just will say that it was very touching (and frightening!) to see different sides of the Warchief (...fuck Garrosh; what, yeah I said it).  I enjoyed doing the dailies and am looking forward to getting my greedy little crafter hands on the new blacksmithing and engineering patterns. 

Moment of Durr:  So, I'm running around with a guildie, getting into the Firelands quests and whatnot... and all he wants to do is go to Firelands.  So me being the dork that I am, I thought that you had to zone into it, like do the quests and then it would open up to you.  Even my GM wasn't overly sure about it, as I'm sure he was waist-deep in patch notes and fixing his tanking UI (and if he's reading this, I'm also sure he will ascertain that he knew otherwise later).  So, we did the quests as far as we can before he called it a night, and after he goes to bed, I'm trying to figure it out.  I googled "how do you get to Firelands" and this popped up.  Well, golly gee, you just WALK IN THE FRONT DOOR.  /facepalm  Brilliant.  At least I wasn't the only one with this issue!

Mail vs. Plate & Roles in Dungeons

Got hell from my GM regarding my gear today.  I was sporting a mail headpiece when I went to have him enchant a few pieces of gear.  I should have known better, and as soon as he said, "why are you wearing a mail head piece?" I knew I was caught.  I didn't think it was that much of an issue, but on further reading, it is.  So, after rearranging my gear and getting things enchanted, I ran a dungeon to see how things were sitting.  I didn't notice a huge difference, though I'm not sure if that's just me settling into the rhythm of things or what.  I still need to work on my percentage of overheals...

Today's Moment of "WTF":  My last run of tonight involved a warrior who queued up as a tank, but didn't have the gear or confidence to actually tank.  *eyetwitch*  Fortunately, I had another warrior who was willing to step up (though he had an old spec/gear from WotLK), and he did pretty well.  Our run through Blackrock Caverns was sucessful, albeit amusing.

TIP:  Don't queue up in a role that you are not prepared to fill!

Crepuscular Veil, An Apology, & Combat Logs.

So, apparently I need to know the fights I'm walking into a bit better.  For instance:  went into normal mode Blackrock Caverns the other day with my two guildies, Fallenjack and Omnitek.  Went through the majority of it pretty well, though I realize that positioning and LOS (line of sight) issues are something I need to be aware of a bit more.  We got to the very last boss, and I was damn near frantic trying to figure out how the hell to heal my tank and the DPS who was kiting the adds when it seemed as though NONE of my heals seemed to be doing a whole hell of a lot.  *sigh*  Come to find out, something that I was never aware of as DPS was causing my panic: The adds were casting Crepuscular Veil (healing effects are reduced by 24% for 4 seconds).  o,o  Well shit, I've even kited the extra mobs and I never even payed any attention to that, and never had any problems with it either.

I'd like to take a moment to apologize to anyone who has ever had to heal my oblivious ass.

So, suffice to say, I'm becoming more aware of things that I need to do, especially as a healer, but in general as well.

On top of that, we were running combat logs, and to my dismay, my overheals were absurd (>50%).  So, I also need to be more aware of who I'm healing when, rather than wasting ridiculous amounts of mana.  "You need to remember that you have a TANK to heal before anyone else," my GM's words of wisdom on the situation.  Hopefully, the next runs will be more smooth and less panic-y.

/facepalm...

Nevermind.  After going a whole level's worth of questing into Vashj'ir, I realized that I didn't turn my XP back on after doing some solo work last night.  -.-'  *sigh*  So that pretty much killed any momentum that we had as a group.  My GM signed off for the night, and I am left to catch up to where they are.  This is a definite drawback to questing in a set group.

*sigh*  And on top of that, I got into a Throne of Tides PUG to get some of the XP I needed, and did all right healing-wise, but on the last boss, a Ret Paladin died because he was standing in the bad stuff and had aggro on the mob that the tank should have had (the tank was trying to get it off him, but the idiot had Righteous Fury on for some unknown reason).  Then I get the comment from him in party chat:  "... heals?"  *eyetwitch*  But instead of bitching him out, I didn't.  Wasn't worth it.  Then the tool takes the plate healer gear that dropped.  ...  I just...  REALLY?!?  -.-'

The game is becoming more and more about gear and bullshit like that.  Everyone expects to ride on the shoulders of their tank/heals, and if they die, then heaven forbid anyone point out that they were STANDING IN THE DAMN FIRE.  I am spoiled in the fact that my tank/GM knows his shit and has been brought up with the Vanilla mentality, rather than the Wrath Baby mentality.  I will admit that I came in on Wrath, but I'd like to think I'm not as scrub-tastic as most of the people out there playing WoW nowadays.  I just hope that we will be able to find some exceptional players to join us in raids eventually.  That would be great.

New Character & Downhill Slide

So shhhhh...  Don't tell anyone, but I started a Shaman.  :P  Actually, I figured that the mail INT pieces I had used on my paladin while she was leveling are no longer being used, so why not start a new character that could use them?  It's been fun thus far, but I always go back to my paladin.

Tonight my guild will be working on leveling in the Cata zones together to get another level under our belts.  I posted last time about getting all of the Wrath heroics out of the way, and now that all of those guild achievements are taken care of, now comes the downhill task of getting to 85.  Fortunately, this period of time will be more focused on Fallenjack (my GM's prot warrior) and Omnitek (one of my fellow officers, his warlock), because my main is already outfitted quite nicely with Ret/Holy gear.  80-85 on Kamikita will be concentrated more on refining my healing mechanics and fixing my UI to be as smooth as possible.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

When my guild decided that we were going to power out all of the guild achievements for the heroic Wrath dungeons before moving on to the Cataclysm zones and leveling to 85, I was fairly confident that we wouldn't have any problems doing this.  I had forgotten about the Occulus.  >.<

The Occulus is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the most popular dungeon on World Of Warcraft.  In fact, many people still quit upon entering it via the Random Group Finder.  Having only done this dungeon in a DPS role, I have always found it to be fairly decent, and as soon as you understand how to use your drake effectively, the last fight is a walk in the park.  However, I have never done this as a healer.

So, off we go, and having done the Occulus once before on non-heroic mode, I was already okay with the basics of each boss fight and how to heal through certain things.  I was not, however, prepared for a serious addon malfunction and the ensuing confusion on the last boss.  After mounting up to take on Ley-Guardian Eregos, my Grid was not showing my tank as a targetable player.  Basically, it was not recognizing that he was on a drake at all, and showed him as out of range.  I told him he was not showing up, and reloaded my UI, but still had the same difficulty.  He didn't seem to grasp what I was trying to tell him, and needless to say, when the boss was aggroed, I wasn't able to heal him, we wiped, and after a short discussion, I rebooted the game entirely, and that seemed to solve the issue.  Then we did just fine and got through the fight (barely), but it really raised some interesting questions for myself and my guild.

How does your guild deal with adversity in the middle of a fight?  Generally, I'd say we do really well.  When groups of mobs are pulled that we didn't expect to be pulled or someone does something outside of what one would consider a textbook scenario, we know our characters well enough to pull out tricks to help us all get through the moment of "OMGWTFBBQ?!?"  We still have our moments of crossed wires apparently, and that just tells me that I need to work on my own communication skills so that I can effectively communicate issues and strategies to my guildies.

How do you best learn about a fight or encounter?  In this case, I was not well-versed in the drake healing section of The Occulus.  I know that I learn best by trial and error, but I can't always use that, as there are other people who are relying on me to keep them healed!  So, before I went in, I got basic ideas from great websites like WoWWiki and TankSpot, and tried to keep things together with the knowledge I snagged from there.  Doable, but not fantastic.

So, the lessons taken away from this are: Communicate effectively with your group, and try to know the fights beforehand!

Frustrations

I'm trying to get myself in the mind frame that I need to be in for raid healing, and so off I head into the random group finder again, and I have emerged with more frustrations than before.  Even in normal dungeons, I feel like my heals aren't big enough to cover the incoming damage, and I'm sure there are at least several things that I am doing wrong.

Issues:
- Not running out of mana/running out of mana too quickly.
- Having to use large heals over and over to deal with incoming damage.
- Too many people taking too much damage.


Solutions/Changes:
- Choose the heals I use with more discretion.  Don't use big heals just because, use them when needed.
- Use Judgement more often.  EJ suggests using Judgement at least every minute or so to keep mana restoration and haste rolling in our favor.
- Don't worry so much.  As I have even said before, Holy Paladins aren't supposed to be raid healers.  If I wasn't able to save a low-end DPS because he was standing in the fire, there should be no sleep lost over it.  Plus, I'm not even at 80 yet.
- Practice, practice, practice.  I've gotta get into more dungeons and really concentrate on doing what needs to be done.