Tale Fifty Nine: Failing at Healing?

No, not quite failing. But I am beating myself over the fact that a pally is beating me at healing.

Now, I know that shammies chain heal spam and pallies Holy Light Spam.

So where does that leave me? At the bottom of the recount meters and with the most Overhealing done.

It's frustrating in the sense that this pally just started raiding with us (it's Mr. Littlebark's pally, sinking his toes into some raiding again) and he's already beating me. This also used to happen with his shammy (but then again, I can never beat shammies.)

So, it got me thinking. Am I doing something wrong? I'm rocking the Revitalize Spec (18/0/53) instead of the Living seed, since our pally tanks were having mana problems and my Living Seed ended up being an overheal anyways.

At the moment, my current stats are as follows:
Bonus Healing: 2148
Crit Rating: 17.12%
Haste Rating: 513
Mana Regen: 789

I feel like my spell power is much too low, my haste rating is still a work in progress, and for some reason my crit is really low.

Anyways, this post is more of a "speaking to myself" kind of post. I was hoping maybe putting it on paper might help me spot out the problem.

Or maybe I am over analyzing this, which wouldn't be something new.

Anyways, they say that two heads is better than one. Then I imagine that whoever sees this, and spots the problem head is better than just my head.

Thoughts and maybe suggestions are appreciated. I feel like I'm not giving 100% to my guild and I really hate that feeling.

Tale Forty Nine: With 3.3 on the Horizon...

I can actually say, "Bring it on!"

You see, I've never before been prepared or cared about a patch. EVER.

I was BC Baby and got my first level cap toon to 70 in August 08. Lich King came out in November and by then, I'd gotten bored of my hunter Thienna and started leveling my druid, Littlebark. The xpac hit -and despite having 2 level 70 toons (Thienna and Jezabeth the lock), I continued to level Littlebark who was level 64 that weekend.

So of course I missed the first weeks of Naxx. And of course, my work schedule is weird, so I could only raid on the weekends. As fate should have it, my guild did not do weekend runs back in the day. So I didn't really get any Naxx25 gear sadly and only got Naxx gear because I volunteer to start up Naxx10 runs on the weekends.

3.1 comes out, and with it Ulduar. Again, I'm not quite ready for it. I'm mostly geared in Naxx10 gear with some Naxx25 here and there. I take a break from raiding 25 mans because I am not compatible with the guild we did our joint runs with. Start leveling the dwarf Alliance priest instead of pugging Ulduar. Get the priest to 80. Start a guild with Mr. Littlebark so I raid late night weekdays and thus, After Hours is born.

Start missing the druid. Family and friends pop up in WoW... Alliance side. Make the painful decision to tranfer LB to Alliance. Start Naxx10 from stratch with the new guild. Progress to Ulduar.

3.2 comes out. ToC. After Hours is NOT ready for it. Keep doing Ulduar. Not enough people to raid. I start to get restless with no raiding. Start working on my Argent Tournament dailies instead of recruiting. A week later we try ToC10 even though our gear sucks. We down Anub on our second night.

With After Hours taking me by suprise, and finally having our core members, I truly do feel ready for Icecrown. I know the raiders like me in the guild are itching to get in there.

I've taken a few steps to actually be ready for this:
- Sold a couple of things from the gbank so that we'll have repair money.
- Stocked the bank up on Flasks.
- Made 60 Mana Pots.
- Went fishing for 3 hours today just so we'll have enough Fish Feasts.
- Bought extra head, shoulder, and leg enchants so I can put them on new gear I gear.
- Have extra glyphs to switch in and out.
- Sent a bunch of greens to my enchanter so she can disenchant mats for me. Mr. Littlebark is a enchanter, so I'll be able to have my new gear enchanted and ready to go as soon as I get it.
- Bought extra water and bandages (no mage in our raid ): )
- Bought extra reagents (for our paladins, priest and druids) and poisons for our rogue in case they run out.
- Watched and read up on strats.
- Reviewed and triple checked the patch notes.
- Almost decided on my spec/glyphs.

So yeah. This is a big deal for me. I've never ever been this crazy and ready for any raid before.

Is it slightly crazy? Yes.

But I'm totally glad I did it.

Tale Thirty Two: Offering to Buy Gear? Yes or Nay?

I was in a PuG VoA25 the other day, with 3 resto druids and a boomkin. Inside, I’m groaning because that’s three other people I’m going to have to roll against to win tier gear –if it drops. Yeah, go ahead and call me greedy.

I’ve been having a very “is it full moon” kind of month, and rolling anywhere from 1-30. Fail. I do VoA25/10 every week, because if you have the right dps/tanks/heals, its basically free loot and badges. And for the past month no druid gear has dropped and if it has, I have rolled a 1. *weep*

I got a whisper from one of the other druids (lets called her PvPDruid), asking me if I would be rolling on PvP gear. I told her that no, I wouldn’t since I don’t PvP. Go ahead and flame me (please don’t, remember I’m a tree!) Anyways, the druid said that she was here for PvP gear. I said, ‘all yours’.

What I understood from this was: if you don’t roll on PvP gear, I won’t roll on your PvE gear.

Sweet, right?

I inspected her gear and kind of did a double take, wondering why she didn’t want any PvE gear with the gear she had. PvE gear is still an upgrade from a blue in PvP right?

Fast forward to the boss fight. We shot down the first dude whose name I still can’t remember and I run my barky legs over to his corpse. And Oh.My.God. The T9.5 legs. When it came time to roll on them, I said a quick prayers to the healy gods and pressed /roll.

And boom: a 94.

My celebration was cut short however, when I saw this:

PvpDruid rolls a 95
ThatOtherDruid rolls a 94
TheBoomkin rolls a 40

I said a quick ‘grats’ in raid chat and started my vent to Mr. Littlebark, who also happened to be in the raid.

“Offer to buy them off her,” he said quickly.

WHAAAA?!

“No!” I snapped, thinking off how horrible that sounded. Buy gear that she won?

[PvpDruid] whispers: If any PvP gear drops, I’ll consider passing it on.

I was so upset that I just responded with a “no worries”. As I knew it would happen, no more druid gear dropped. At the end of the run, I left the party and sulked in Dalaran.

Mr. Littlebark and I had a conversation whilst I was making dinner about 5 minutes later, in which he said he didn’t see why I didn’t even try to buy them off her. First off, they’re T9.5 pants. They were more of an upgrade for her, obviously. And I was embarrassed that I wanted the pants bad enough that his suggestion sounded great. So he offered to speak on my behalf.

And lo and behold, two minutes later, Mr. Littlebark came back into the kitchen and proceeded to tell me that I now was the proud owner of new T9.5 pants. My first T9.5.

“I can’t believe she agreed to give them to you,” I said, a grin plastered on my face.

“Well, you’re 1000g short now, but I kind of figured she would sell them. She’s a PvPer. And besides, she said she’s cash starved at the moment.”

1000g…

*sigh*

Well, at least I have new pretty pants.