Category: Uncategorized
The Next Big Thing
The challenge for healers, I think, is not to keep everyone alive. Not currently, not for another ten days plus levelling time at the very least. The new talents put us well over the top in terms of ease- a fact drive home when Run to the Door hammered out our guild-firsts on High King Maulgar, Gruul the Dragonkiller and Magtheridon without appreciable healer frustration. Healers going OOM, healers screaming “I just can’t keep them alive”- it didn’t happen. Once the DPS stopped letting the healers get Deathcoiled at High King, once the clickers got their collective act together in Magtheridon, we steamrolled our way through. Admittedly some of our folks had never seen the fights, and some had never even been in a group larger than ten people outside of Alterac, so I’m not blaming them.
I’m just saying… keeping folks alive isn’t the challenge any more.
Which got me to thinking. I know, soon enough, that Wrath is going to hit. We’re all going to peg 80, we’ll be wearing blues again instead of our shiny purples, my Large Brilliant Shards will be even more a thing of the past… and for the first time, I’m going to be on the forefront. See, back when The Burning Crusade hit, well, I had no 60’s. I had a couple toons in the 30-50 range but I was still getting warmed up to the game, having only played for a couple of months. I didn’t really know what I wanted to be. My druid, a different toon and, at that time, not my main, was only level 14.
This time, I’m going into Wrath with a guild that, even if we can’t start the Heroic Raids- which is an open question!- can certainly tear our way through the 10-man progression track. Our more rabid raiders, myself among them, are razor-keen and raring to go. I’m going to be attacking content beyond the ‘dabbling’ stage, and I’m going to be doing it while it’s relevant instead of during its closing days.
Which leads to an interesting insight. Run to the Door has been riding roughshod over Zul’Aman- we were an ace away from the full four chests last time- and if past experience is any indication, we’re going to do the same thing tonight.
And then I realized…
I don’t know what Hex Lord Malacrass looks like.
I don’t know what Halazzi the lynx-lord looks like.
I don’t know what Zul’jin looks like in any form.
I can tell you what happens in those fights, all nine phases of them, from the perspective of any role, with notes for class-specific issues- that is my job as a raid leader, when such duty falls to me, and I seem to have a knack for explaining concisely what each class needs to be doing, so such duty tends to be my job a lot.
But… I don’t know what they look like.
I end up so focused on the small rectangle of my screen that is my Grid readout that it’s all I can do to avoid getting nailed by the vortices in Zul’jin Eagle. I have developed, in short, a grand old garden-variety case of tunnel vision.
I’ve been experimenting with both variations on my old Dreamstate build, and on a 5-56 and 10-51 Resto-weighted split. I like Wild Growth, but I also like Nature’s Splendor and frankly I prefer my Use-More-Than-Just-HoTs Dreamstate style. There’s something satisfying about the SHOOM noise a 6k Healing Touch makes.
Tonight, I think, I’m going back to Dreamstate. 31-0-30, no Swiftmend but I’ll get it soon, and I want the Balance talents- particularly Moonkin- for leveling with. And my new goal? It isn’t to keep everyone alive. I can do that. Lots of our healers can do that.
Tonight, for our fourth clear of Zul’Aman… I want to see what Zul’jin looks like.
