Mooonfire!

The place is a mess, there are posts that need fixing, the various lists on the sidebar are extremely old and you have no idea what I’m up to in-game these days. Also, I have a developing rant about what makes raiding fun.

You do not, however, get any of these things right now, because my first post back after a long, long hiatus, is about my current spec, what makes it fun, and what I might change.

You can find it by examining me on the armory, and it’s something of an odd spec- A variation of the Dreamstate healer (itself uncommon) without the classic support talent Brambles. It takes the DPS-enhancing talents intead.

So why do I like this build? Versatility.

We were in Karazhan last night. We had zero warrior tanks. Nada. We had only two healers (both druids, neither me). Majinbill, a paladin, was our main tank. Maj and I have this understanding, and we’ve now tanked, as a team, all of Karazhan (and upper Kara twice).

We started out fine. No priests, so no real CC against undead. One of the DPS face-pulled a second pull during the stables. We didn’t even notice until after the pull was down. Midnight/Attumen were cake and, coincidentally, dropped the scope schematic I’d been hoping for for a very, very long time.

Moroes? No CC. Shadow priestess, holy priestess, prot warrior, ret paladin. No real trouble. Maj held Moroes/Ret and I held Moroes/Crispin until the priests were down. Fury warriors went to work on Ret. Crispin was my buddy for the remainder of the evening. I died due to healer inattention, but then we were running with two healers where our guild traditionally takes three.

Maiden? Maj and I both put on our healing sets. He cleansed and did spot heals, I healed, one of the fury warriors tanked her (We had already determined that I could in fact hold aggro on her just fine with only my instants, but two healers was insufficient for the damage flying around).

Opera? Romulo and Julianne. What’s the problem here?

No dispel.

Lots of interrupts- no dispel. We tried it with me tanking Julianne and Maj tanking Romulo. Problem? Not enough healing. Okay, I put on the healing gear and strap one of the fury warriors back into their tanking gear, away we go.

Curator? Cake. I have a partial arcane resist set, so I soaked up bolts and pretended to be DPS while Maj took the big guy.

Aran? Double cake. I just pretended I was DPS (and took out two of the water elementals on my own).

Prince? Triple cake. Drop into the healer set and let Mr. Pally have all the fun. Once we hit phase 3 the healing requirements slackened off, but we needed DPS, so… wrath away!

So why this post? We were talking it over in the raid, and realized just how useful it is to have a raid member who can, at need, be any of the three roles.

I love my spec. It makes me all happy.

(It’s pure gravy that neither our prot paladins nor our prot warriors can hold threat against me if I decide to take the mobs away- something we used to our advantage in Karazhan last night. “Llanion, you take skull, I’ll hold the others. Burn skull, then grab one off me and keep going.”)

Is there anything I’d change? Honestly, yes- I’d like a point or three in Subtlety. My aggro is still sufficient to match a Warrior, and I would have a higher cap on my DPS in raids when I’m filling the DPS role. I’m still thinking about it.
Hopefully my next post won’t have such a long gap. Peace!

~Ll

One Response to “Large Prismatic Cow”

1. Wildhermit Says:
   July 23rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   Now this sir… is a respectable update

   I had loads of fun in Kara that night. Great stuff… I wish I could make it more often.

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