It’s incredibly interesting that this dilemma has come up for me at a time when the community is ripe with debates on raiding in general this tier. There are discussions of teams getting burned out, skill differences, encounter difficulty in Throne and a general trend of a dwindling raiding population for normal modes and beyond. These general issues are great but for me it comes down to whether or not these affect my decision to raid this tier, as an ordinary raider.

And ofcourse the ultimate question is whether the raiding commitment in 5.2 and MoP is worth it?

To answer whether raiding (and healing) is still for me, it’s vital to look at a couple key points in the raiding world. The first is ofcourse an honest look at whether healing is still fun for me, next comes my take on what it was like to keep up with being raid-ready, and finally how Throne in particular fits into all of this.

The Joy of Healing

It’s good that I’m able to still say that – healing is still very much a joy to me. I’ve healed for the last five years now (egads, where did the time go) and I’m happy to say that I still enjoy it. That’s not to say, however, that it’s easy. It’s still a very stressful job while raiding. Blizzard may have made a lot of changes to healing but one of the things that will never change is that by lieu of our role, any other role’s mistakes will eventually be on us to carry. Did the tank taunt a little too late? Well, he needed extra healing for it and probably gave you a bit of a heart attack during that time. Was that player a little slow in running out of the group? It costs more healing and maybe even a cooldown to save the raid.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t mechanics that do encourage personal responsibility. If someone doesn’t move out of Durumu’s purple beam of nastiness, they will get blown off the platform regardless of what your healers can do. But there are still many mechanics that put more on a healer over and above the things a healer already needs to heal through. This is partly what makes the job so fun since you’re always living on the edge but also can make it very stressful as well.

As a discipline priest in particular, it’s gone both ways for me. Keeping track of all my cooldowns while healing in an encounter that has a million things going on is nothing short of crazy sometimes. And this is with me having almost everything tied to muscle memory. Add to that you have the dynamic oh-crap moments of a fight and it can be more stressful than expected.

Maintenance of Raiding

A good way for me to see how much time raiding maintenance took while I was doing it, is to take a look at what I’ve been able to do now with the time that’s opened up. While raiding on an already tight schedule, I simply didn’t have time to level up a second 90, finish out my reps, pet battle, level alts, and do old world stuff for fun. Some of it was simply that I didn’t have the time to do it. Other times, I was simply too tired mentally to play anymore. What exactly was my time filled up with while raiding?

Valour capping was a big one I remember. It was a pain at the time and I imagine it still is. It was necessary to try to get better gear so I didn’t hold my team back. Speaking of better gear, there was LFR as well.  And to get that new gear, I needed the shiny coins which in turn needed the dailies that I didn’t want to do but felt I had to. It was great to run LFR when I simply needed to practice my raid mechanics or figure out my healing cooldowns beforehand. Not so great when I needed to run it for gear and valour. Even so, new gear wasn’t the end of it. There was the added cost of regemming, enchanting, and reforging. I didn’t have the time to bring up my alts to 90 so, I was sometimes stuck with the not-so-ideal auction house for my gear enhancement needs.

And then ofcourse, there were the consumables. I had to spend time, and my precious gold trying to get enough feasts and personal stat food. So if I wasn’t doing rep dailies for coins, I was doing cooking dailies for ingredients. If I wasn’t running LFR for gear, I was fishing for mats. There was also the daily chore of using my farm for herbs and vegetables for the feasts and flasks that I needed.

Finally, there’s the actual task of encounter research. This somewhat segues into my next topic but I’ll mention it briefly here. The more complex an encounter, the more time it takes to learn it. And the more outside research it takes to understand it. This is over and above what I was already doing to be raid-ready. Before Throne was released, I spent time writing many of the healing strats for the bosses. I think it’s safe to say that these bosses are decidedly more complex than many of the past raiding tiers. Council was on of the longest posts I wrote and I struggled to condense it into a something memorisable quickly for healers including myself. And that was just the third boss of the raid.

Encounter Complexity

The simple way of talking about this is that sometimes, it just gets to be too much. Information overload. Lissanna of Restokin wrote a fantastic series talking about the complexity of encounters and the limits of human memory and reaction times. I’ve experienced some of this both in and outside of raids, and this is where Throne in particular comes in.

Gone are the days, atleast for this tier, where I could look at the general mechanics and quickly weed out what I need to know as a healer, thus condensing each fight into a few bullet points. The problem comes with adding complicated conditions to each fight that makes it more difficult to remember and requires more prep time outside the raid. As for the actual healing going on in the raid, you have call on that complicated order and memory during a high stress period. Very different from solving a complicated math problem on a quiet day, or trying to remember the laws memorised for the mid-term.

Being pressured to remember the intricacies of “run out of the raid group but only here and not there and remember to click twice or you will wipe the raid” while the tank is getting stomped and the raid will soon take intense damage in a few seconds,  is far more difficult than remembering “run out of the raid group now”. It can get overwhelming pretty quickly. And this is over and above lining up Archangel with Spirit Shell, keeping track of cooldowns and Rapture etc. and all the other things healers need to keep track of regardless of what’s going on. When I was thinking about this today, I couldn’t help but remember an old post by Matticus in the days of heroic ICC where he talked about the limits of mental bandwidth for healers:

“I don’t know how complex future raid encounters will be. I just hope they don’t get any more complicated than they are now. As a healer, being pushed is fun. Having the opportunity and time to react is fun. I enjoy reacting to scripted and random events as they occur. However, what isn’t fun for me is watching eight timers on my screen, keeping an eye on debuffs, and keeping my other eye on my frames while figuring out if I have the time to use a medium heal or a fast heal.”

It seems as though ‘interesting’ has been equated with ‘complex’ this tier. The more ‘interesting’ the mechanics, the more ‘complex’ they should be.  And I’m not sure that’s a good assumption the designers made. Because at the end of the day, from my healing perspective atleast, it challenges our notion of ‘fun’.

Conclusion

Looking at all of this had made me wonder if there is any room left in this expansion for the “casual” or “semi-hardcore” raiders. Raiding comes with a lot of maintenance if one wants to progress, even if the pace of progress is nothing close to the server-first chasers. Do I want to heal again? Yes, I miss it. And there’s something to be said for wondering what a healer is doing if she isn’t healing. But despite my love for the role, I cannot ignore the baggage it comes with this expansion, and the challenges of this tier. I do not want to spend hours poring over boss fights. I do not want to raid struggling for a gasp of mental air the entire time. And, I’m sure there are others who decided to stop raiding this tier for these reasons.

After my previous dreadful raid team experience, it was suggested that I start my own team and have the freedom to raid on my terms. But simply thinking of keeping track of all the encounter mechanics in Throne of Thunder, in addition to my healing decisions on cooldowns, spell-usage and mana management made me hyperventilate.

As far as raiding goes for me, it’s a tough decision that I’m unable to make one way or the other. A good start would be to see if I can muster up the courage to do a couple PuGs, and see if I still enjoy raiding. I’ve been wanting to do that but I’ve always chickened out and I think it’s partly because I feel compelled to take on the raiding maintenance all over again. I will keep trying though. If I enjoy it, great. And if it feels unfun to me then it might just be time to call it and sit this tier out.

Here are my picks of outfits to sport Benediction with!

The classic set that goes with Benediction is ofcourse, Tier 1 – Vestments of Prophecy.

 The entirety of this set can be farmed out in Molten Core and it’s a great way to couple a transmogrification run with grinding reputation for the Hydraxian Waterlords. If I’m feeling particularly vanilla, and want the nostalgic yet regal priest, this is my go-to set.

Another contender with the intricate red and gold design to complement Benediction, is an outfit made around Robes of Power.

Note that you must be a tailor in order to get this outfit since Robes of Power are tailor-only and BoP . But they look so cool, I’m seriously considering switching professions for it! I went with a scholarly look on this one

Where to get the Set:

Chest: Robes of Power (BoP, Tailoring)

Shoulders: Flarecore Mantle (BoE, Tailoring)

Gloves: Soulcloth Gloves (BoE, Tailoring)

Waist: Voidweave Cilice (Voidhunter Yar, Rare in Nagrand, Auction House )

Head: Chief Architect’s Monocle (Fineous Darkvire, Blackrock Depths)

Feet: Fire Striders (Balnazzar, Stratholme)

Benediction is a stately staff sure, but that doesn’t mean a sassy outfit doesn’t go well with it. The third option, the Cindercloth Set adds a bit of sexy to the look.

This is a lovely and fun set  - very close to what Sally Whitemane in Scarlet Monastery wears. Given its sexy appeal, I was pleasantly surprised at how good it looks on a gnome.

Where to get the Set: 

Chest: Cindercloth Vest (BoE, Tailoring)

Shoulders: Sunderseer Mantle (Heirloom)

Head: Circle of Flame (Ambassador Flamelash, Blackrock Depths)

Legs: Cindercloth Pants (BoE, Tailoring)

Gloves: Inferno Gloves (BoE, Tailoring)

Waist: Voidweave Cilice (Voidhunter Yar, Rare in Nagrand, Auction House )

Feet: Fire Striders (Balnazzar, Stratholme)

The final set in this collection revolves around a robe that’s been an all-time favourite of mine. Scarlet Sin’dorei Robes have all the red and gold coupled with some tummy-bearing awesomeness.

I simply couldn’t hold in my need to have goggles on atleast one of these sets so I decided to add a bit of “cool” onto these.

Where to get the Set: 

Chest: Scarlet Sin’dorei Robes (Kael’thas, Heroic Magister’s Terrace)

Shoulders: Sunderseer Mantle (Heirloom)

Head: Fire Goggles (Engineering)

Gloves: Sunfire Handwraps (BoE, Tailoring)

Feet: Fire Striders (Balnazzar, Stratholme)

Waist: Girdle of Ruination (BoE, Tailoring)

Happy Friday!

]]> http://healsnheels.wordpress.com/2013/05/17/benediction/feed/ 0 Lil-Bene forcemocha Lil-prophecy1 Lil-Robes of Power Cindercloth1-front Lil-scarletsindorei http://healsnheels.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-gnome-racer/ http://healsnheels.wordpress.com/2013/05/04/the-gnome-racer/#comments Sat, 04 May 2013 16:50:28 +0000 Saya http://healsnheels.wordpress.com/?p=2054 ]]>

Image courtesy: ‘Azeroth Remembered’

This past week, my thoughts wandered somewhat nostalgically to old Azeroth. There was one place in particular that I still miss going to – the Mirage Raceway. No matter what I was playing, or which faction I was on at the time, I loved going down with my mechanohog to just hang out and ‘race’.

Those memories are the inspiration for the latest transmog outfit – the ‘gnome racer’. I wanted the outfit to be snazzy, befitting of a racer afterall, and yet comfy and practical while my gnome revved up her mechanohog and prepared to leave goblins in the dust.

The Gnome Racer

I wanted something stylish and unique so I started out with one of the coolest cloth chests in the game – Watcher’s Tunic – and built the rest of the set up from there. The pieces that make up this set come from a variety of sources so if you’re looking to put this one together, get ready to make a grand tour of Azeroth! Note that she is indeed wearing a shirt, Deckhand’s Shirt, to balance the deep cut of the tunic. The shirt is skin coloured so it’s very subtle in it’s appearance.

Where to get this set:

Chest: Watcher’s Tunic (Quest reward from Forge Camp: Annihilated)

Shoulders: Reinforced Woolen Shoulders (Tailoring)

Gloves: Ebony Flame Gloves (Ebonroc, Blackwing Lair)

Waist: Embereye Belt (Avenger’s of Hyjal, Honoured)

Legs: Embersilk Leggings (Auction House, random mob drops)

Feet: Embersilk Boots (Auction House, random mob drops)

Shirt: Deckhand’s Shirt (Auction house, Southsea mob drops)

Head: Spellpower Goggles Xtreme (Engineering)

The sad news about this outfit for me, is that I’ve already long completed the quest that provides the chest on my main gnome. (In 6 years of playing, I’m bound to throw things away ) So if I do manage to get this set, it would have to be on a new reroll and I’m honestly quite tempted to to it.

Although the goggles are so quintessentially gnome, I think this set also looks really good on a taller race like humans.

Badass heals. You rang?

And frankly, it’s a lovely change from the usual robes and elegant shoulders priests have. I mean, who wouldn’t want their medic to look like this?

I’ve always been a huge huge fan of the priest tier set at the beginning of Cataclysm. It has such pretty colours, lots of detail and and just plain looks cool. There were two parts of it that took away from the coolness of it though: i) the enormous bird-feeder type shoulders and ii) the gigantic WWE-type belts of that tier that went along with it. Taller classes can pull these off a bit better –  but on a gnome, it just looks like a disaster.

See what I mean?

So there I was wondering what I could use in place of those two. I dug into my bank and found great options for both slots. I like how both the shoulders and the chest have matching gold detail going on, and the length of the shoulders gives a different look – as though wearing honours rather than a mantle. On a gnome it’s particularly cute as they touch the ground when she runs.

The best part about this set is that you do not have to be a priest to be able to wear it. There are look-alike equivalents that easily get around the tier portion of this outfit.

Where to get this set:

Chest: Mercurial Robes (Priest-only, 2200 Justice Points) or Robes of the Burning Acolyte (Halfus Wyrmbreaker, Bastion of Twilight)

Shoulders: Lightning-Infused Mantle (Quest reward from “Diametrically Opposed“)

Waist: Ruthless Gladiator’s Cord of Accuracy (Honour Points)

Feet: Slippers of Moving Waters ( BoE, 1650 Justice Points)

Hands: Mercurial Gloves ( Priest-only, 1650 Justice Points),  Brackish Gloves (Chimaeron, Blackwing Descent)

And…..tadaaa!

The key to this fight is Gara’jal the Spiritbinder, who apparently has a difficult time moving on. So he makes life difficult for us by empowering each of the troll Elders. They gain different abilities when they are empowered, and the longer the fight gets, the more difficult it gets to heal.

There is no one big moment of raid-wide damage versus others in this fight. The difficulty of this fight is in dealing with the damaging abilties (with the exception of empowered ones) at the same time.

Malakk

- Keep track of Frigid Assault: This is a stacking debuff which causes Malakk’s melee attacks to deal additional frost damage. Keep track of the tank swaps and heal up the tank dealing with Frigid Assault.

- Keep 4 yard range from members: The Biting Cold debuff deals damage to all members within 4 yards of the affected player so maintain range to avoid taking damage from it.

- Heal member afflicted with Biting Cold: Biting Cold deals around 100k damage every 2 seconds and the debuff lasts 30 seconds – be sure to put some extra heals on affected player. This debuff actually hits fairly hard and I recommend using a cooldown to help deal with the increased damage.

- Heal through Frostbite (and stack if necessary): This is Malakk’s empowered ability and contrary to Biting Cold, it requires 2 other members to stack with the affected player to reduce damage. Communicate with others and stack if necessary with the player. It’ll be hard to miss if it’s on you – it has a very noticeable frost orb kind of animation. This is a great spot to use area-specific cooldowns to deal with incoming damage since the raid is largely spread for the entire fight. I rotate my Barrier in with other area cooldowns from other healers to deal with this.

Marlii

- Heal through Wrath of the Loa: This spell is constantly cast and can throw around quite a bit of damage that must be healed through. The holy version deals about 150 – 170k damage while the shadowed version hits for a little less. It’s a good amount of damage constantly going out.

- Kill the loa spirits: Both versions of these spirits (empowered and otherwise) need to be killed asap within the short 20 second window. The empowered versions are particularly deadly as they target a raid member and blow up on reaching them. Use movement speed boosts if targeted to get some distance, and help kill it if possible.

Kazra’jin

- Avoid path of Reckless Charge: This ability causes knockbacks and damage to folks in its path – avoid it.

- Queue a  healing cooldown for Overload: This is his empowered ability that takes after Reckless Charge and is similar to Cowardice from Spirit Kings where a percentage of the damage taken is reflected back to players. It’s a good place to queue up damage mitigating and healing cooldowns to deal with this.

Sul

- Maintain 5 yards from raid members: Sul’s Sand Bolt deals a good chunk of damage to a randomly targeted member and all members within 5 yards of them. Stay spread out to avoid taking damage from this, and heal through Sand Bolt.

- Avoid the Quicksand pools: These spawn at random raid member’s location and deal high damage to those in it while also reducing their movement speed. Avoid these at all costs and use movement increasing boosts to get out quickly incase your location is the lucky spawn site. The movement speed reduction is dispellable and worth keeping an eye out for when people get caught in these pools. Lifegrip does not work to break the snare for people already trapped in it. But it is a fantastic tool if you can time it right after a quick dispel to save a fellow member.

- Heavy tank heals during Living Sand: This is Sul’s empowered ability where Living Sand adds spawn. They hit fairly hard and must be killed quickly. Queue up heavy heals and/or a damage mitigating cooldown for the tank picking these up. Also note that the tanks may take a second or two to pick them up, and sometimes you’ll find yourself at the top their aggro table as a healer. I ordinarily use a Fade here just to be safe avoid getting smacked in the face by these nasty adds.

- Heal through Sandstorm…Maybe: Depending on your raid’s strategy, you may or not even deal with this ability. If your raid kills Sul right off the bat and then moves on to the rest of the mechanics, you’re all set and probably won’t even see this. If not, then you’ll want to keep a cooldown and queue up some heavy healing for Sandstorm. It is a raidwide AoE ability that hits fairly hard. It’s a great idea to queue up Spirit Shell to mitigate the incoming damage and coordinate with another healer’s cooldown.

Cascade and a glyphed Penance are true blessings for this fight where the raid is spread out and constantly on the move avoiding things.

There were a couple things (some that happened before the talk and some that happened after) that really confirmed that I had made the right decision. One of the officers had made a post titled my character’s name and proceeded to critique all my gems, enchants etc. with no reference to any credible priest resource. Shortly after my conversation with the raid leader, I saw a recruitment post go up for my spot with a special note that they would not tolerate “weak-minded” people. Yep, I was done.

The last two weeks have had me trying my best to figure out what it all means for my WoW future. Somehow, they really did get to me and made me question my own ability to heal. For the longest while, the thought of raid frames and healing just made me feel sick.

This might’ve been the end of it if not for the advice and support of all the folks who commented on the blog and talked to me. I just want to say a big “Thank you” to you all. Two weeks ago, I truly did believe that I would just be walking away from it all, a failed healer and whatnot. And I’m truly thankful to everyone who took the time to tell me it was them and not me. I wanted to believe it then, but it took me all this while to be able to.

I still enjoy playing WoW and blogging, and if the chapter ever comes to an end, I want it to be my decision alone and not be intimidating into quitting. I’ve been slowly dipping my toes back into WoW with some alt-levelling on an RAF account – something I’ve never really done before but boy, is triple experience fun! I still haven’t yet logged into my priest but now it’s more a matter of when, rather than if. And I’m slowly working on getting all those unpublished Healing Perspectives posts out as well.

To the wonderful blogging community, commenters, and friends: Thank you, again.

It was progression on Megaera. I had done my homework, and was actually looking forward to the fight with a good bit of confidence. Hell, I even practiced my cooldowns in LFR. Then came the attempts one after the other as folks got used to the raid mechanics. The tank damage was high, and the early attempts were only with two healers rather than three.

It became clear early on that things were tough on the healing front, especially with two healers. The strategy was to alternate between the red head and the green head, and ignore the blue one. And the stress began to show on the get-shit-done type of raid lead. And then came the shitshow for me.

I hymned right after the fifth rampage, and got yelled at by my fellow healer (who also called the shots on raid cooldowns and such). The raid died and instantly on vent came the yell of how I shouldn’t be hymning at that point. And then it just all went downhill from there – even with a third healer.

Every little thing I did or didn’t do went under the glass. Everything was micromanaged – when to hymn, when to use a potion. I had to hymn early so there wouldn’t be as much of a healing loss when I channeled. Why was I discipline? What about a holy offspec? In our discussions prior to raid, it was agreed that holy wasn’t really needed. But, as the other healer put it, he couldn’t research my class for me. I was fail for not knowing better.

This went on for five hours. Five effing hours. And despite me maximising my cooldowns and mana, every little error got called out on. It finally began to get to me at the end of five hours – my hands were shaking and I began to make mistakes that I didn’t make in the earlier attempts. Two hours after the official raid end time, I apologised and stepped out.

I went back and looked it up. Was holy really somehow way more awesome than discipline on that fight? Turns out it wasn’t – and some priests on How to Priest had the same question that I did. Was my hps obnoxiously low for the fight? The logs didn’t show that. I later talked to a priest healing friend of mine who killed Megaera – when did she use her hymn? Towards the tail end. How did she deal with the last Acid Rain right before the final Rampage? Their leader wove in a Blue head into their kill order so the healers didnt have to deal with a ridiculous amount of spike damage right before the critical Rampage. Well that made sense – why couldn’t one of our million attempts tried to tweak the raid strategy instead? Or was playing the blame game simply that important?

And that’s just what upset me. It wasn’t about working together today – it was about watching the healing go to shit and blaming the other healer to look good for yourself. And that’s not all, it was about railing on the healer for things that weren’t necessarily legitimate concerns. And at some point today, I was just tired….I had a shitty morning, and I hit a low. How did I end up with my weekend mornings in a place like this? What did I do wrong – what did I miss – what did I just not get that I ended up being in an atmosphere like this?

Whatever today was, it killed healing for me. It turned what I do with love and care into something the one guy decided to use to make life miserable for me. How is any of this worth a boss kill?

Today was the first weekend of raiding – and if this is how things get under pressure, then it’s probably not the place for me. But at this point, I’m really not sure if there is a place for me WoW. I don’t want to heal, and I don’t want to log on. My attempts to find a raid group in the last 6 months seems to swing between two extremes: either the folks who wanted to go in with greens, or the obnoxious yelling kinds of people who like to make life living hell for everyone.

Where in this picture would I want to log in, and subject myself to that all over again. Why should I even bother healing.

Two things in particular have followed, one after another to bring this issue up: 1) the strange gear distribution in tier 14 and 2) the recent decision stating that there will be no more 5-mans for the rest of Mists.

Until now, I admit I was mostly unconcerned with the decision not to add any more 5-mans. I sympathised with those that solely play for 5-man content and enjoy it – but I didn’t feel like I had a vested interest in arguing against the decision. That is until I took a good look at my character to get ready for raiding once again. The issues became painfully obvious once I saw the gear I got and the things I was unable to get – namely my problem slot of an offhand.

In my mind, the strange gear distribution in tier 14 and the recent no-new-5-mans decision are connected – and the decision will now go a long away in exacerbating already existing issues.

Tier 14 and the Strange Case of Loot

To understand my conundrum with the offhand, it’s vital to know what went on in tier 14. One of the biggest critiques of Tier 14 was the bizzare way in which loot was distributed. There would be cases where there was an abundance of seemingly pointless duplicates pieces like the  two shaman spirit non-tier chests (Vestments of Steaming Ichor and Mail of Screaming Secrets). There was also the choice of two spirit cloth boots for priests (Scent-Soaked Sandals and Boots of the Blowing Wind) from bosses that were back to back no less.

In both these examples, raiders had alternatives from reputation/tier pieces that could easily replace these slots. In the case of shaman chest, many preferred their tier chests and for the cloth boots, Operation Shieldwall/Dominance Offensive offered equivalent boots if for some reason neither boss dropped the boots for weeks on end. Having these alternatives made having two of the same kind of item in the same raid somewhat redundant.

And then ofcourse, there is the other end of the spectrum where there is only the one boss out of all the 16 who drops the one thing for that slot and if he doesn’t happen to drop it, you’re shit outta luck. It happens to be different things for different classes – for me in particular, it was the spirit off-hand.

The first thing strange about this slot is that your only option for it is Feng the Accursed from Mogu’shan Vaults – where items are already slightly lower in level than the other two raids. I killed Feng numerous times and only saw it drop once. At the time, I decided to be nice and pass it to the other healer thinking I’d see it again. Needless to say, I have yet to see it again. Under other circumstances, I could ditch offhands altogether and just go for a staff – but the introduction of Sha-touched weapons as the best items essentially married me to the mace-offhand category.

Here’s the part that makes it tough – there aren’t really any other alternatives. No reputation rewards I can cash in on, no other boss somewhere that can possibly drop something similar – or heck, even something without spirit. (Blade Lord in Heart of Fear drops a decidedly healer unfriendly off-hand sporting hit. Le sigh.) My only recourse is stacking up on the coins and running it over and over again until I hopefully get it.

It’s an awful recourse not only because of RNG but also because the coin could give you something else off Feng that you don’t necessarily need. How funny would it be if I ran Mogu’shan Vaults and got the spirit ring from Feng every time instead of the offhand? Point is, we could run it till the cows come home and it won’t necessarily make a difference.

No New 5-Mans

5-Mans have played different roles to different players, and woven into the role of filling lore gaps is also their ability to fill in gaping gear holes in preparation for the next tier. I want to say this again – it’s not just to make catching up easy for alts – it’s also to help current raiders fill in the problem slots that were not addressed in the previous tier. And we’ve seen 5-mans of the past do this successfully – even the awful Zul’again ones.

In cataclysm, the notorious troll dungeons were released shortly before Firelands came out. While I agree with many that they were awful and not too enjoyable in the LFG environment, I did notice the impact they had on gear issues very quickly. I would see many toons walking around with their troll shoulders sticking out like sore thumbs amidst their tier 11 sets and look alikes. Apart from looking strange, it told me something – folks who never managed to get their tier shoulders now got a lower item level alternative until they did. And if nothing else, it kept them from having to go into Firelands still sporting their blue shoulders from that one original dungeon run.

One of the interesting differences between then and now ofcourse, is the advent of LFR, and some forum goers ventured to say that LFR has now taken up the role of gear gap filling that 5-mans once had, and thus the decision of not making any new 5-mans this expansion. I truly wonder about this one. LFR has certainly taken on the gearing up role for mains and alts alike and for better or worse, is part of the linear gearing up path.

There are still a couple key differences worth noting. The big one ofcourse is that LFR is on a weekly reset for loot (with extra chances at loot being limited with the weekly quest). Gone are the days ala Burning Crusade and Wrath, where you could log in in the morning and do the one heroic that you need the one upgrade from. With the lack of any 5-mans for the rest of this expansion, this makes LFR and dailies the only stepping stones to filling in the problem slots. So the question now becomes, what if they don’t have it covered?

The Situation Now

My armory paints an accurate picture at the moment of how things are at the moment. My gear’s level ranges wildly from items at 522 with the lowest item being 480 (an upgraded crafted 476). It is sadly something I’ve had since I was a fresh 90 and come 7 months later, I’m still stuck with it.

Let’s take a look at my options as far as LFR and reputation alternatives go. Shado-Pan Assault has nothing to offer for offhands. Throne of Thunder sadly has only one spirit off-hand which drops off Iron Qon. Iron Qon is in the final wing of Throne who will not be accessible via LFR until April 16th. The one redeeming part about Throne is that there is a staff in there I could get my hands on and in doing so, perhaps rid myself of the pain of dealing with off-hands to begin with. But that won’t happen until it drops for me on normal.

In light of all of this, I’ve wondered about a few things. Why was the decision taken to ignore implementing a single 5-man to help address the previous tier’s gear distribution issues? Now, I don’t believe any developer at Blizzard has anything against offhands in particular – and it is very possible that with the wonky gear distribution in tier 14, things just fell through the cracks. But that’s just it isn’t it – a big purpose of 5-mans mid-expansion was to help deal with the slots that fell through the cracks.

And even if we do take that decision for the sake of argument, it then brings up other issues. No new 5-mans puts LFR in a much more important position as far as the linear gear progression goes. Did it really make sense to stagger its release in this manner? Here’s where the two seemingly unrelated issues now come together to make what was already difficult tier, even moreso.

Why am I looking into this in such detail? It’s not because I’m particularly passionate about my offhand slot – but if these issues show up now, there’s a good chance they’ll continue into future patches unless they’re addressed. I’m already in this situation now, and I’d rather not it be this way come 5.3.

That and frankly, come Saturday I’ll be showing up to raid with my new group in Throne. It’s hotly embarrassing to show up to an entirely new tier 7 months later, still sporting an item you’ve had since you were a fresh 90. It’s just not okay.

This expansion has yet to be kind to me as far as raiding is concerned. I found a lovely guild at the beginning of the expansion but sadly the raiding team didn’t work out, and right now I’m back to the hunt for a good group of folks to raid with. I took the chance to revisit what I want out of raiding and what kind of schedule I’d like to be on. Turns out, I don’t like evening raids as much as I thought. So I’ve decided to change my raiding schedule to be weekend mornings.

As I was writing my post on the recruitment forums, I realised that there were quite a few check boxes I wanted filled: Light schedule, weekend mornings, solid leadership, semi-hardcore environment etc. And even if they check all those boxes, they need to want a discipline priest! So here’s the best part: I found a guild who checked all those boxes and could use a discipline priest. Egads. And that’s not all – the most interesting part is that they’re horde.

The prospect of returning to the horde side is a really interesting development that I didn’t necessarily expect while searching for a raid group. And so here I am wondering, is it time for me to embrace the horde in me?

One of the big ones is that the server is a medium pop PvP server. This is both a good thing and a bad thing – I’m not too terribly worried about the PvP aspect of it as much as the medium/low pop part. And even that I think is both good and bad. There’s something I’ve grown weary of on my ridiculously high population server for a while now:

This shot is from a little bit ago so it doesn’t quite show the pain fully. Last night the queue was over an hour long and stayed that way for the better of the night. So the prospect of not having my play time interrupted by nasty queues is very appealing indeed. Ofcourse, the flip side is that when there aren’t as many people playing on the server, the economy is a little different and so are the prospects of searching for a new guild if my current option doesn’t work out. If I am spending real money to go there, chances are that if I needed to look for another guild shortly after (just plan B type scenario here), I’d probably have to spend more money transferring elsewhere. Lots to think about.

For the first time in two years, I think lore has actually popped up in my head as a big concern. So far, I’ve seen Mists through the eyes of an Alliance player right from storming the beach to entire Shieldwall questline. Even Theramore infuriated me as an Alliance player, and so my story has pretty much been defined from this perspective. When I faction change, I will be a little lost.

I think it’s fantastic that Mists has gotten to this point that continuity of story is a significant concern with faction changing for me. I certainly didn’t have this worry in Cataclysm. I have yet to see the Horde side of things as far as the story goes but if anything, I expect it to be even more complicated on their with Garrosh’s path and the internal strife. I’m actually a little excited to see it.

I’ll be weighing things out this weekend and making a decision on where I want my future raiding home to be. I’ve tried to learn from things that have burned me in the past and hold new guilds to higher standards but at some point, it’s impossible to read and predict how it will all work out until one actually takes the leap.

I’ll be taking my own advice for one, with a couple added notes from what I’ve experienced in the last three months. Another thing I’ve also considered is not basing my choice solely on raiding requirements but seeing if it meets my expectations for being a good long-term home and a fun place to hang out. I may be raiding now and I may not be raiding in a couple months – but home should be home.

This is mostly a two phase fight with the second being the final burn phase. The first phase involves dealing with waves of troll adds of different shapes and sizes and having the right dps priority in getting them down.

For this phase, the raid will have to deal with four different tribes all with different abilities. They come in waves, always in the same order. Horridon will probably be kited throughout the room where the doors break and the troll tribes enter. So keep in mind that you’ll almost always be on the move in this phase.

Phase 1: 

- Keep track of Triple Puncture stacks: This is where the tanks will be taking their damage from Horridon so keep track of its stacks and plan out heals accordingly.

- Always stay to Horridon’s side: Horridon does AoE damage both in front of him and behind him with Double Swipe – so make sure you’re never caught in it.

- Avoid Charge: Horridon will randomly charge a raid member and do a Double Swipe right after. If the charge is on you, be sure to get out of the raid so the cone of Double Swipe doesn’t hit the raid. I generally bubble people for a quick and easy movement speed boost to help with this.

Each troll tribe has something to avoid.

Farrakki 

- Avoid Sand Traps: This tribe continually spawns Sand Traps that deal a high amount of damage to anyone standing it in. Be sure to avoid them – they look like little whirlwinds on the ground.

- Dispel Blazing Sunlight: This is a short damage debuff cast by the Wastewalkers that chains to members near the tank. Note that the debuff can stack. Early on, coordinating dispels if two or three people have it is a good way to do it. If more than three people have it and the stacks are getting high, mass dispel is fantastic .

Gurubashi

This wave of adds come with a high amount of AoE raid damage so be prepared for heavy healing and cooldowns.

- Heal through volley: Venombolt Volley is the primary source of raid damage here that must be healed through. The raid damage can get fairly high since the effect stacks and has a duration of 60 seconds. Plan out mitigating and healing cooldowns to deal with this phase. Ideally your dps will be interrupting this as much as possible but it can go off once or twice. Spirit Shell is a fantastic way of dealing with the high incoming damage.

- Avoid Living Poison: This is a big green pool on the ground that deals a high amount of damage to anyone in it, and must be avoided. Note that these pools move around so maintain a safe distance while avoiding them.

Drakkari

- Top up the adds tank before Drakkari adds spawn: These adds do nasty debuff with Mortal Strike on the tank that reduces their healing received by 50%. It is necessary therefore, to have the tank be at full health before grabbing them. This is also a great time to queue up damage reduction cooldowns and absorbs on the tank to help with surviving the debuff. (Note that that Spirit Shell might not be as effective here unless it pre-cast before the debuff as it essentially converts healing and thus would still be affected by Mortal Strike).

- Avoid Frozen Orbs: These orbs deal about 200k damage to nearby players and are deadly – keep a safe distance from them. Word of caution – they look exactly like the orbs a regular mage would cast, so it made for interesting reactions early on. And yes, we have a mage in the group

- Kite undead adds: The Risen Champions of this group spread a nasty disease (Deadly Plague) when they strike players. Avoid getting hit by them and use CCs to keep them away from players. Note that they can be rooted and knocked back as well.

- Dispel Deadly Plague:  Dispelling the diseases here isn’t your run of the mill dispel whoever has it type scenario. A good portion of your raid will have diseases on them and going through and simply dispelling them all won’t work. Note that the diseases stack, so the key here is to go through dispel-triage in a sense – and dispel folks where the stacks get too high to heal through. Also make sure to prioritise tanks in your dispels.

Amani

- Avoid being in front of the war bears: The bears do a frontal swipe which can be quite damaging – so make sure you aren’t caught in it.

- Avoid Lightning Nova Totem: This is deadly and does 500k to players within 8 yards of it. Stay away.

- Maintain 5 yards range: The adds also do a deadly chain lightning ability that jumps to players within 5 yards and do increasing damage when that happens. Spread out to avoid multiple members getting chained.

- Dispel Hex of Confusion: This is an annoying hex that gives players a chance to injure themselves while casting. Dispel it as soon as possible.

Phase 2

Phase 2 kicks in when all four doors have been broken. Keep track of the phase transition and use the time to heal up the raid and/or stack Spirit Shell in anticipation of the incoming raid damage from War-God Jalak .

- Cycle cooldowns to deal with heavy raid damage: The two main sources of high damage in this phase is Bestial Cry from War-God Jalak which does 100k physical damage to all players, and Rampage which increases Horridon’s damage. Coordinating cooldowns in advance to deal with the increasing damage is key.

- Stack and heal on Horridon’s side and hope he dies: Stack to take advantage of mitigating cooldowns, triage, and hope it dies.

The number of abilities can seem daunting but the fight itself gets easier the better the raid is on interrupts and add damage. Once everyone has the dance down, it’s an easy hop skip and dance to shinies.