This is why you shouldn’t bump Earth Shields February 11, 2012
Posted by Calmsong in Healing, LFG, Raids.add a comment
Ran LFR Madness today with a friend. For Warmaster Blackhorn, I was wrestling with a second resto shaman who kept bumping me no matter what tank I switched to. For Spine of Deathwing, a third shaman joined the raid, but I couldn’t be sure whether shaman #3 was also bumping or if it was just shaman #2. I could be sure that neither was even attempting to shield the second tank or another target because, every time my ES did fall off on its own, I got the raid-wide “Earth Shield Missing!” warning.
Got to Madness and shaman #2 left. I mentioned before we started how glad I was that he was gone since he’d been bumping me the entire raid.
The fight starts, wherein I learn that shaman #3 is also a bumper. The entire fight, shaman #3 is periodically bumping me and not even trying to shield the second tank.
We kill the boss, and Maw of the Dragonlord drops. I have the iLvl 403 version, so I don’t need it. But I roll need anyways, just to try and stop the other resto shaman from getting it. I win it.
I tell the other healers not to leave, then check their rolls and their healing numbers. The last place healer was supposed to win the mace, so I traded it to the #2 paladin healer who was generally doing a good job the entire raid.
The other shaman whispers me, and this is what I said:
I feel vindicated.
Earth-Shield-Bumpers and Why We Hates Them January 23, 2012
Posted by Calmsong in Healing, LFG.2 comments
I ran LFR Siege of Wyrmrest Temple earlier this week and had to quit it one boss shy of completing it because my daughter was home from Girl Scouts. (BTW, support your local Girl Scouts: buy cookies!) Yesterday I decided I would finish it off. I q’ed up as heals and was pleased when it put me in a raid that was at Hagara.
Now, my Power Auras is set up to give me two notifications: one for when there is no Earth Shield anywhere in the raid, and another for when I don’t have an Earth Shield up anywhere. Before we pulled the boss, I saw that there was another resto shaman, and I saw that only my personal “Missing Earth Shield” icon was up, meaning that the other resto shaman had Earth Shielded one of the two tanks. I looked at the tanks, found the one that lacked an Earth Shield, and hit him up. He rushed out and aggro’ed Hagara and the fight started.
A few seconds into the fight, Power Auras notified me that my Earth Shield was missing. The other resto shaman had switched to trying to Earth Shield my target (who happened to be the main tank on this one-tank fight).
Oh, no you didn’t, I thought, and put my ES right back on that tank. The other shaman bumped my ES off again. We started to go back and forth.
Haste v. Mastery in Dragon Soul January 4, 2012
Posted by Calmsong in Healing, Raids.Tags: Dragon Soul, Haste, Mastery, Resto Shaman, Restoration Shaman
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When my raid team first entered Dragon Soul in November and early December, I reforged deep into Mastery. And, as we were still learning these bosses, I think it paid off. Below are the World of Logs HPS parses for our first kills on the following bosses:
So with Mastery, I was the top healer on five out of nine kills. On another fight (N-Warlord Zon’ozz) I was just barely below the top healer, a discipline priest. The only kill for which I was the bottom healer was N-Ultraxion, and I blame that on the fact that I didn’t understand very well how Ysera’s buff works. [Note: We've since found that it's best to assign me to the Kalecgos buff, wherein I can spam Chain Heal endlessly at the end of the fight when the raid is most likely to be taking heavy damage and we'll be getting the most out of my Mastery.] During Firelands, the only fights where I had a fighting chance of being top healer were Beth’tilac or Rhyolith. Everything else was largely single-target spread healing and I grew accustomed to looking for my name at the bottom of the meters.
