It never came back.

My love for WoW never came back. I still play of course; things like getting the daily randoms done, the weekly.. But nothing more. I haven’t stepped into ICC yet except a rep run here and there. I don’t know why. I love my friends in game dearly and really can’t bear to leave them. But WoW, it does repluse me nowadays. Maybe it’s because I’m tired and jaded with some real life stuff and it translate over to WoW as well. Or maybe, just maybe.. I blame WoW for screwing everything up. Many things just don’t ever come back once they’re lost.

The lazy way out to a post!

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? Andrys, Priest, Holy as raiding and Disc otherwise!

• What is your primary group healing environment? Mostly Heroics and 10 mans.
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why? Love Prayer of Mending coz I just love that nice chime when it bounces.
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why? Lesser Heal. Don’t even have it on any action bar nor bothered to bind it.
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why? Whole lot of fun! Priest healing is so flexible that it can be personalised so much so everyone’s style varies enough to be recognisable.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why? Main tank healing! Unless I swap out to my haste set, MT healing is still a challenge to me esp when it comes to under-geared tanks. Also, it might be just coz I find MT healing/ spam healing kinda boring..
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Raid! But I love support healing as well; that is with the hastened Mass Dispels, fully talented AoE heals or raid-wide bubbling etc.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why? Disc priests; coz I hardly get any chance to indulge in this. Thank god for Faction Champions. Now ppl really appreciate how I just don’t die!
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why? I only have a Paladin as an alt healing class. I tried healing with her once but found it really boring.. I kinda like watching my cooldowns and planning for inc damage rather than just spamming and watch huge crits hit home.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? Holy spec specific, I keep 3 stacked Serendipity for way longer than I should. Also, I baby the Warlocks too much with Renew.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? I hate it when tanks insist they haven’t received a heal in 3seconds and it’s a felony! I do mostly 10mans, and in that setting, it’s perfectly ok to be left alone for that little bit while healers help out the DPS teetering on life and death.
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Totally! While Priests may no longer top healing meters, it’s very often one of our cooldowns that made the difference in a critical situation.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? People thanking you! It’s great to know you saved someone from a potential killing blow. It also reflects on how well and fast you react to inc damage and how accurate or experienced your judgement has become.
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class? They think I’m a god. To be honest, I’ve always wanted to slack off and be a support healer.. Sadly, Holy priests are very often thrust into the spotlight as THE raid healer.. Sometimes I just wanna dispel ppl and top up.. =S
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? Holy wise, it’s just managing the cooldowns properly and maximizing things like Serendipity.  Disc wise, it’s a whole new play-style that I often advise ppl to try only when they have Holy down to an instinct.
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see? You’ll see me big on Prayer of Mending and Flash Heals. Meter wise, I won’t be top of HPS or Overheals but you’ll definitely see that I die the least in the raid.
• Haste or Crit and why? I have 2 sets of the gear. Haste for MT healing but I tend to lean towards Crit on my balanced set so I regen better and can dps when needed.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Druids? and Shammies? I only play belf toons so.. yeah..
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? Grid + Xperl mainly.. Between these 2, I can configure every last spell there is. Naturcast and OmniCC are some other stuff I find useful.
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why? Mostly balance.. But I do stack Int and Crit more than I do Haste and Spirit these days. Regen isn’t all that great compared to the old days you see..

Deadpanning.

I got my Violet Proto-Drake on the first day or rather, Day -1 of Hallow’s End since it came early on the Oceanic servers. There was no thrill, no rush, no nothing when I saw the multiple achievement bars pop on the bottom of my scene. I guess it’s over.. my love affair with WoW. I’ve nothing more to chase; no more reputations worth grinding for, no partner to go rough up the arena scene with, no more out-in-the-open achievements to hunt down. Fuck, this is what happens when you don’t raid, you don’t go hard-core. You eventually deadpan.

I feel like crap. I like challenges, I like blood, I love adrenaline. And now, I’ve seemed to lose all that both in real life and in game life. Sigh, this is a new low. I’m itching to kill things; shit, I’ll even go back to managing the very vast enterprise that’s my former guild.. with my very anal GM. Just for the sake of a little thrill. TBH, let’s just say I love control. Sometimes I do take more pleasure than I should rubbing their faults into guildies’s faces. Hmm, btw I was hired/requited to my former position to be the biggest bitch there was on the server. That, technically makes it not my fault when I make people cry; it’s just my job. See, my former guild’s just sick and yes, sadistic. I think they rather liked me that way.

Ah, maybe I should just channel the excess energy into some useful blog entries maybe. Like, maybe I could discuss some useful raid strategies/talent builds/gear choices/rotations.. blah blah blah. Maybe. But nothing’s interesting me much anymore! rolls eyes* I really wish it were otherwise. Can’t someone just throw me a difficult puzzle to solve or something? It’s like my brains cells are degenerating these days.

Break

I lost momentum with WoW again. Maybe a few more days, then I’ll go back to my baby paladin and get some new badges come in. Sigh, healing really gets boring sometimes. In my current state of mind, I guess the slashing sounds from my huge axe when I play retadin suits me better. I’m murderous; killing stuff really calms me down, especially when I lick alliance blood off my blade.

The Burnout.

Suddenly, I found myself in need of a ridiculously huge number of Triumph emblems this week and hence, have done every possible raid to secure as many as I could. Triumph gear doesn’t itemise very well with what I currently have and I’ve found upgrades beneficial only when they come 2 pieces or more together. For example, the helm and shoulder pieces are what is available to Holy priests atm. It is unfortunate though that the helm provides crit when it’s meant to replace my current one that’s loaded with almost half the haste I have atm. The shoulders.. god damn works the other way round much to my annoyance. So, 75+45 emblems is what I’m looking at for now. 1 week more of raids to go before a real upgrade.

I know the talk of the week is Onyxia; but I’m kinda.. over Onyxia before it started. See, nothing’s new to the encounter, not even the crap loot. I assume melee is going gaga over the all too familiar, nostalgic weapons; but as a clothy, I’m like hmm.. Ok, the ring from the 10man head is a slight upgrade for me I admit. But the 2 piece trinket set? Hmm, I don’t get who might want them actually. Both trinky slots for those procs? I really think it’s not worth it considering the other very powerful alternatives that just take up a single slot to actually work. Onyxia’s still a pretty girl as I remember from vanilla days. I’m just a tat disappointed how easy this is after they threw Ulduar and before-nerf ToC at us. After all, a dragon’s a dragon.. I kinda would like more punch lol.

And ToC nerfs have ruined everything. I loved Faction Champions before the nerf. They were.. a challenge; and uber fun despite all those wipes. These days, it seems more likely to die in a lowbie-mixed-in AV than in Faction Champions. Honestly, my raid this week suffered a tickle.. and that really was it. Now, even Dreadscale and his pal are higher up on my ToC hate list. Wait, even the girls are more troublesome. >.< That’s of course also because they fixed Twin Pact and I can’t zerg kill one anymore. Sulks* Give me back my original ToC damnit!

Raids aside, I finally got my 100 mounts achievement today as I got around to buying the 16,000g vendor mammoth. I could have waited another 10days for an AT mount, or farmed myself another battleground mount, but somewhere deep inside, I just think I’ve always wanted one of them mounts that screamed, ‘I’M RICH!’ Ok, not anymore though after that purchase.. But whatever. This week, I’ve also gotten around to finally doing some Ulduar hard modes with Heartbreaker and the IC ones down. Maybe I’ll blog those soon, but hmm.. When I feel less sated enough to write a technical piece, we’ll see. I’ve also encountered a rather inadequate Disc priest this week in my raid; which prompts me to write yet another Holy vs Disc piece. Actually, I’ve had that draft in my folders for days now; just too lazy to touch up enough for a post.

Also, I’ve fallen in love with Wintergrasp finally! My tank’s been laughing at me non-stop for days now.. since I had the Emalon 25 achievement pop in last week’s raid. He just couldn’t believe I’ve never done Emalon before. O_o” (the context: on my weird server, VoA groups typically ask for an achievement link before they let you go with them.) TBH, I’ve done VoA 10 + 25 less than 10 times altogether before. I’m only into it now because I was needing that Mammoth to drop for 100 mounts before today and also, I need a T8.5 glove. Sigh, mere mention of T8.5 and I get pissed. Itemisation is such a pain, I’ve got a couple of pieces of ToC gear just sitting in the bank because I cannot let the T8 2-bonus go. Sigh, 10% crit on PoH? I really can’t let that go. Just tell me what to do now.

Pouts*

Brewfest…hic!

God I hate Brewfest. 350 coins to get my achievements done and right up to now, my tally is at 191. Sigh, it’s no wonder I’ve skipped Brewfest every year previously; it’s just one big screwed up event. Also, did I mention how much I hate my fuzzy screen after I get smashed defending kegs every half hour? I don’t get 10mins of somber time in an hour seriously. Gives me a headache. By the way, BRD was never really a place I fancied. Now, it’s degenerated to loathe.

There was this one time…when I was drunk… I burned BRD to the ground. No, wait.. fire doesn’t work there does it? More like freeze it over maybe. God, you have no idea how long it takes on my server to get this daily done. I camp on average, 5-6hrs before there’s any success; for 10 frking coins!! 10!! It’s just utterly insane. There was this 1 fail attempt, they managed to hit 1 iron dwarf during the whole event >.< Sigh, I log on  an alt parked on the brewfest grounds every half hour to check.. But sigh, it’s a lot of disappointment and frustration for 10 coins. On the brighter side, my quest for Loremaster is really going well because of this. I simply quest and quest and quest until I get this daily down.

Ram racing.. This really pisses me off. I’ve failed 2 times in a row now because of random DC or server lag. It is a bad bad idea to try to do this right before Tuesday maintainance when server goes crazy. I’ve just blown this like that and it makes me so so so mad! And Blizz is really really stupid not to make this a daily or even a 12-hourly quest whatever.. But simply, I would love to see the exclamation mark to know when it’s available again. I really don’t get why we need to talk to the goblin to find out. It makes for a huge crowd at the tent everyday, whatever time it is and that just doesn’t help with the stupid lag and bugs surrounding the whole Brewfest event.

Personally, I feel Brewfest is too demanding as an event. It’s incredibly stingy with the tokens with just 1 standard daily that gives 15coins. The iron dwarf daily is a nightmare for raiders who have no time to camp this hour upon hour and even then, it’s just 10 coins. With just 12 days to go and 160 more coins to get at least, the achievements are still within reach provided you have some patience and diligence. The pressure’s there though because it’s this tight and it’s certainly not helping me enjoy the festival at all. I even prefer the Lunar fest to Brewfest despite the amount of effort honoring elders took. At the very least, the other festivals brought you around Azeroth and combined some lore, some interest, some pvp, some variety. Brewfest is really lacking in all that. It’s more like boredom, repetition, goblins, and the same patch of desert land for 15days.

It’s time for a revamp Blizzard. Brewfest’s a time to chill and have a beer, not stress out and QQ.

Sarth and 3D >.<

We tried 3D today with the zerg strategy; that is, to get Sarth down before the whelps pop. I have to say, even with some uber DPS, this isn’t gonna be the easier fights around anytime soon. We wiped 2hours until the instance respawned and still couldn’t break the 15% barrier. It was truly a stretch of limits with me solo-healing the single tank. DPS could not afford to take damage at all even from the adds. There was no margin for error and DPS had to pump a cool 5k and above to even achieve any form of success.

Talking about the healing; it was easy at the beginning but it only really begins after the 2nd fire wall is over. Henceforth, the tank spikes crazily with the 2 or 3 drakes breathing on him. I couldn’t afford to even move because I had to spam heal. I had the retadin bubble me so I could stand in a fire wall and keep the tank up. All is lost however, once the whelps spawn and reach the group. There is no way in hell a tank can survive so many things hitting/breathing him.

If you’re interested in this strategy; here’s it in more detail.

• 1 tank, 1 healer, 8 DPS
• We pulled at the landing on the left behind Sarth.
• Ranged DPS mostly stacked with melee except hunters who had a range problem.
• Sarth was tanked facing right and had his body parallel to the edge of the isle.
• DPS stood in a line along the edge of the isle with Sarth almost right on top of them.
• Healer (me) stood on the other side of Sarth with the hunter.
• Raid dodged Fire Walls by either dipping into the lava behind them or running under Sarth to my side.
• It’s very important that DPS look for voids because they are stacked.

In the end, I called for end of raid because it was simply going downhill as people lost concentration. The last few attempts saw people grabbing aggro, people eating voids, people getting breathed on. I guess it’s 3D next week again. Btw, our DKs each pumped out 8k that fight. That just leads me to think perhaps next week, I’ll get 8 DKs instead. >.<

Whee @ Twins!

Well, after we downed Faction Champions (thank thank god!!), we decided to have a go at the very cute looking twins. Hehez, I really didn’t read up on the fight and neither was I truly listening to the raid leader when he tried to explain. What I did.. was to /w my tank and tell him I’m utterly clueless and that he needed to save his skin when it got dire. That worked well though hahaz; my group lived despite me having my eyes glued on the TV watching Lady Gaga on MTV! ^^

We tried at first to have 5-5 on either twin/colour and to DPS down the shields. For some reason though, the dark group kept wiping it up despite having 2 healers while I tried really hard to keep the light group alive. DPS made loads of noise about having to swap colors to DPS shields, complaining it wasted too much time having to run to portals. Ok, so tactic failed because the girls healed themselves pretty much a lot. After about 3wipes, we changed the tactic.

Crazily enough, we decided to ignore the shields. >.< (DPS was pretty uber that night.) I stayed on the left/light with my main tank while everyone else took down the dark girl. We wiped another 3 times before people got used to the dodgeball and swapping portals for the AoE. I wiped them once cause I got ambushed by 4 black balls.. I was so scared lol, I kinda crouched on the floor and cried. Oh wells, nvm.

The successful attempt, the girls casted Twin Pact twice. Nobody in the raid died though there were a couple of close shaves. It was not a hard heal on my part as well; I even found it quite fun running around with the floating balls. ^^

Some Pointers

• It might help you to play dodgeball if you angle your camera for a top-down view. You’ll see where the balls spawn and their projected flightpaths.
• Sometimes you’ll have 4 or 5 balls converging on you. Don’t panic, breathe, bubble yourself. Choose a path where you’ll bang headon into 1 so you escape the rest and minimise damage.
• Use your tank to soak damage from balls when you got no choice. Hide behide him and top it up. 7k might tickle him, but it’s a punch in the face for clothies.
• Watch out for the AoE! If you’re like me, aka zoned out, watching TV while raiding!! And, you’ve managed to lag enough such that the girl’s unleasing the AoE while you’re in the wrong color and some distance from the portal; please don’t panic. Stand still and spam heal yourself!! If it gets desperate, use Guardian Spirit or Pain Suppression. Running at this point will more than likely cause death.
• Soak up the balls of the same color!! It’s so much fun to do and the buffs are fun too.
• Throw CoH onto members of the other group if you like me, are doing tank heals on 1 side.
• Conserve mana; I did have to use fiend.

Depressing.. PvP.

My blog stats are depressing; but whatever. We downed the Faction Champions in ToC 10 today. I must say, it took us 8 wipes today and countless others the week previous. I really feel small as a healer during this encounter cause everyone says, ‘Kill the bloody healers first!!’. I get how unpopular healers are in a PvP situation especially since I’ve had rogues and DKs and shammies target focusing me in BGs this whole week. Was dabbling in some thoughts on Arena for the new season until today. Btw, the Frostwyrm mount is awesomely cool. Oh wells, PvP makes me lose my cool and curse a lot.

Well, if you’re interested to know about Faction Champions, here goes:

Kill Order

• The resto druid – coz he heals for so bloody much, is instant with casts and it’s a pain to dispel hots.
• The ele shammy – coz he hurts with his crits; clothies get 3 shot and it’s bb. Also, he moves around a lot and those bloody totems grrr…
• The death knight – makes everyone sick with this or that disease and kept slashing at our cloth dps.
• The shadow priest – dots everyone up so killing her means your dispeller is now free to actually start healing/dps-ing.
• The holy paladin – is not instant with heals so we had our DK play with her.
• The hunter – hurts. the pet died somewhere in the middle; I don’t know how.

The Opening

• Our warrior charged and stunned the lot of them.
• Bloodlust was applied.
• Hexed the Shadow Priest and the Holy Paladin.
• We raped the Resto Druid.
• Our hunter laid a frost trap on the cc-ed bunch.

After the death of the tree

• CC was free for all hence forth; we threw it on whatever was not the target atm.
• Our dk deathgripped the Holy Pally away from the main group and stragulated/stun/silenced.
• Our warrior played with the DK away from the group and chased when it went after clothies.
• DPS, ranged mostly; raped the shammy but it took significantly more time than for the Resto Druid to die.

The Finishing

• Is basically a win if you reach this stage with everyone in raid alive and well.
• DK died pretty fast once we had those 2 down. No special note there.
• Shadow Priest was reportedly a pain coz she bubbled ppl. Just Mass Dispel.
• The Holy Paladin needed to be zerged. Split DPS on him meant he healed enough to not die.
• The Hunter hurt like hell on cloth but range him so he can’t shoot you; he doesn’t really move much.

The theory was to kill the big healers and big critters. Therefore we chose to kill the Tree who healed for too much too fast and the Ele Shammy who really dropped the raid too fast. DoTs etc are not a big issue because healers can heal these damage ticks but not burst DPS such as those from a shammy or rogue.

Side Notes

• Our Warrior and Paladin were in tank specc.
• 3 healers: Holy Priest, Disc Priest, Holy Paladin
• Paladins are not a good choice for targets that need to be interupt lock downed.
• Our dk hated that he couldn’t make the Holy Paladin interested in him; but he chased him anyway.
• Our shammies and holy priest purged/dispelled the current attack target as much as they could.
• We set off loads of AoE fears and Arcane Torrents coz we had like 4 or 5 belfs.
• Zerging targets is a must especially at the begining and for healer targets; else they won’t die in time.

Personal Notes as a Disc Priest

• Try to stay at max range of the fray and fade fade fade.
• Mass Dispel was my job entirely and very very impt to keep up until the most dangerous 2 are dead.
• Movement limiting stuff are first dispel priority. Hammer of Justice, Chains of Ice etc.
• If Deathgripped, Fear. Keep fear for such emergencies, not run into the fray to blow it when it’s off CD.
• If targeted, run. Staying max range helps coz you’ll see things running in your direction.
• Don’t stand still for long; moving makes you harder to chase down.
• Bubble, bubble, bubble; for Renewed Hope.
• Arcane Torrent the casters since you’ll press that button anyway for mana.
• And I ran out of mana in the middle and used Hymm, and Fiend which I set upon casters to irritate them.
• Heal with PoM and bubbles, penance in beginning with priority on dispelling.
• Use Divine Hymm early and together with Inner Focus when ppl are hurting most.

Bloodlust.

I had such a bad week that I am totally exhausted mind, body and soul. Nothing has gone right. And in the end, I got so fed up, so upset that I engaged in some retail therapy that only made me even more guilty afterwards. To curb my spending, guess what ridiculous thing I did. Sigh, I deliberately put myself into a pair of heels I knew would hurt my feet so bad, I couldn’t possibly do serious damage to my bank balance. That aside, WoW was a serious letdown this week as well. I’m half wanting to take a seriously long long long break again.

Raid night Friday came and went with me screwing up Northrend Beasts so bad, I decided to drop the raid after that. I virtually did everything wrong. Like, I forgot to flask, I forgot my haste food, I forgot to set clique up, I forgot to get out of my BG/Arena UI.. I basically was next to being AFK in raid that night. Wonder wth was wrong with me really. When on the 3rd attempt, I managed to die on Phase 2 and got auto-released from my BG UI, I dropped from the raid to reset it. What went wrong was that I got re-invited back in afterwards with them managing to actually down the boss. Despite being outside the instance, I got bloody saved. I went in, got my badges, glanced at the loot ( nice wand btw), and told them I’m not in the mood and left.

I felt bad really for dumping my regulars, but I wasn’t about to wipe them more later on. People kept bugging me to roll on the wand, but I flatly refused. See, I don’t roll on loot if I feel I don’t deserve it. Plus, equipping it will only remind me of my failure everytime I use it; that’s just insulting. Couldn’t believe my tank got my bf to roll on my behalf. Anyways, I got screamed at by said bf for dumping the raid etc. C’mon, it’s not like I didn’t know there was a replacement available even if I left. Besides, I just wasted my instance save for something I had no part in at all. Sometimes, I really hate that my bf plays WoW too, and he plays it with me. It’s hard to not bring the frustrations and anger in the RL with him into WoW. I hate that it’s our link; that it’s the one thing that keeps us together. And by saying ‘together’, I have no idea what that together even means anymore.

I went on to get into AV to slaughter some alliance for sanity’s sake. My MT later on /w me to say they downed the 2nd boss 1 shot, and to comfort me. Sometimes, I realise how much my tanks pamper me; and I’m truly grateful for that. It’s probably why I don’t fancy raiding guilds; I don’t get to choose my tanks. Even my bf didn’t bother to comfort me; somehow, the closer people are, the more unforgiving and accusing they become. I’m not sure if I’m tired of WoW yet. I’ve spent most of the week inside BGs rather than instances because my mood was so fiery, it kinda scorched everyone who ventured too near. Like, I yelled at a PuG tank last night because the retard stood inside a Descecrate on P3 of Black Knight in ToC. Like, I yelled at the bunch of idiots in WSG who stood there PvP-ing their asses off while the flag-carrier skipped his way ACROSS the fray to a quick cap. Seriously, is it me or is it them itching for insults to be hurled their way?.

Week’s over. Hope the incoming one will be better, but I seriously doubt.