Onyxia PuG, Brewfest, and fun for all!

Yesterday I had to leave work early to take the wife to a doctors appointment. I got home from all the running around before I would have normally gotten home from work, so I logged in to WoW for a bit before taking the boy to Boy Scouts. I completed my achievements for Brewfest finally. Only 12 more months to go to get my proto-drake.

I managed to get an invite for a Onyxia PuG. This was my first time on level 80 Ony. I had tanked her a number of times in classic, and this fight is pretty much the same. Healing this fight was a blast. We wiped 3 times, once due to bad luck with the tank dying right off the pull, once with really bad timing going into phase 3. She hit phase 3 right as the elite add spawned, and a whelp spawn. There was no recovering from that. The 3rd wipe was also in the phase 3 transition, with a flame breath knocking some of the dps into the rookery as she was landing.

ExOb is recruiting, our Warrior MT has had a change in work schedule and will not be able to raid for the foreseeable future, so we are scaling raids back to just Wednesday and Thursday until we are done recruiting. This means I can put the wife on Soccer duty, and raid my 2 nights a week...I hope.

So hopefully tonight we will smash down the ToC 25, and one shot Ulduar tomorrow, and I can show off all the phat lewtz I win in DKP, cause lets face it I can't win a roll to save my life. Yay DKP!

Weekend Update

This week was fun and profitable, an early brewfest drop of the Tankard o' Terror last week I was able to sell the tankard for 3500g. The tankard was selling over the weekend for 500g. I am just 41 tickets shy of my Brew Master title and feeling pretty good. I used some of that gold to buy flight for my DK at the newly reduced price of 225g, and bought Northrend flying tome for both my warrior and DK. I actually brushed off the cobwebs and tanked a few instances this weekend with my warrior. I think I did pretty well, except the DK in the party kept dying. Turns out he did not understand aggro management, I got tired of trying to save him. Let him get killed, then intervened the healer picked up the run away mob, and continued.

I did not play WoW at all on Saturday. Saturday started with an incredibly early 7:15 am appointment for team pictures for my sons soccer team. Took my car to the shop at 8:30, had $500 worth of repairs. Stupid German Sports car. It turns out it is quite bad when the check engine light is flashing. Then my son's soccer game at 11:00 am. They played a team that has been undefeated for 3 seasons in a row. They play a very physical game. They had 2 boys yellow carded for rough play. One boy was sent of the field and red carded for throwing an elbow on our one scoring opportunity. My son has a dozen bruises on his legs and thighs from being kicked. It was a rough 5-0 loss. We had some friends over Saturday afternoon. It was about 100 degrees, the pool was a wonder 82 degrees. We played in the pool for a couple of hours, I BBQ'q a pepper and garlic rubbed pork loin, then we played Settlers of Catan until the wee hours. Other than that whole car repair thing it was a perfect Saturday.

Grunty is in the hizzle!

In lieu of actually attending Blizzcon this year, and the fact that I was working Saturdays when Blizzcon rolled around I purchased the online stream of Blizzcon so I could watch it at work. Well this morning I was running early so I checked my email before work. There was an email from Blizz, with my Grunty code. So because I was running early I thought I would redeem it, and log on to check him out. Well guess what I was late for work. But I did get this quick screen shot of Grunty on Papa Hummel's pet biscuit. Enjoy. I will try to frapps it and post him later today.

Brewfest Rocks!

Yesterday I went home for lunch, I can do that because I live only 4 miles from my office. It rocks. After reheating my enchilada left over from Monday night I decided to log in to WoW and do the ram racing daily or maybe kill Coren Direbrew. Well I popped on, and was immediately hit with a pst "Wanna heal Direbrew?" Sure I says! 5 minutes and 5 Direbrew kills, 2 brewfest mounts and one Mug o' Terror. I won the roll on the mug, lost the mounts. Put the mug on the AH because I don't do melee dps. When I got home from work, and soccer practice, and boy scouts I hopped on to finish gathering coins for the day.

Low and behold, I had a new message from horde AH. It said my Mug o' Terror sold and I was 3500g richer! Woohoo! That put me over the top to but Epic and Northrend Flying for my level 72 Warrior who I am trying to get to level 80 and start tanking again.

Brewfest, Achievements and ToC 10

Last night I was conflicted. Do I sign on to WoW and get more tokens so I can complete the Brewfest Achievements or do I watch "The Big Bang Theory", a show that I contend is the best show on television.

Well WoW won, I thought I would logon and complete the dailies and then go back and watch TV. Well soon as I popped on I got a message. "Want to heal ToC 10?". Why yes I did, and we burned through the place in about 40 minutes. No loot for me, even though just about every boss dropped mail. It was all hunter/enhancement loot. I got these nice little achievements and got to do a quick raid, and still made it to bed in time to not make Mrs. Skraps angry.








Brewfest:

Last year I gave up on "What a long, strange trip it has been" right after Hallows End, when I failed due to RNG and a lack of Sinister Squashling. This year I think I will try again, starting with Brewfest.

I hear you can get about 100 tokens per day. I have gotten 85 on the first day, then about 50 per day since. If I do not get the 550 needed to get the garb, and brew of the month I will give up again.

There has to be a plus side you say? Well Brewfest is now 3 days old, and I have killed Coren Direbrew 15 times, I have seen two Brewfest Kodo's and one Brewfest Ram. I think I have a pretty good shot of getting one by the end of Brewfest, if I can ever beat the RNG. So Far I have rolled a 3, a 2, and an 11 today at lunch.

Healing Heroics: Part 2, How to heal

Healing heroics as a new 80 Shaman is tough. Our heals are not as big as some other classes, we only have one HoT (not counting Earthliving procs), and we bring a different type of buff to the group that takes some getting used to. But what we do bring to the party is totally awesome. We bring Totems, we bring Bloodlust, (Or Heroism, for you Alliance types) and we bring the totally awesome Chain Heal!

With the new Shaman totem interface it is easier than ever to place your totems. I have 2 standard totem sets when I heal. I have the With a Paladin, and without a Paladin sets. With a Paladin I drop Flametongue, Stoneskin, Healing, and Wrath of Air. If we do not have a Paladin I swap Healing with Mana.

The most important thing when you first start healing is knowing when to heal and what heals to use.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS have EarthShield on the tank. Not only does it benefit from your spell power but any threat generated from the heal goes to the tank, not yourself. (Edit: Turns out I missed in patch notes, like a year ago, Earth Shield threat now goes to the Shaman who cast it.) Get the Riptide Glyph, and spread it around the group, but be careful it generates a lot of threat and sometimes you can get aggro early in the pull.

Master the Jump. I always have a heal casting on the tank, even if she is at full health. If I get to the last 15% of the cast bar, and the tank has taken no damage, hit the space bar to jump and interrupt the cast. Then recast Healing Wave, watch the cast bar etc. etc. etc. This way you always have a heal almost ready to go, but you are not wasting mana on overheals.

Once you start getting geared into early Naxx gear you will find healing as a Shaman much easier. Your mana pool gets bigger, your MP5 goes up and your heals land bigger heals. Once you get over 2k bonus healing your Chain Heals first jump will land for a 10k heal, your healing wave will land for 15-20k. There is nothing quite so awesome as seeing a tank go from 50% health to 100% in 1.8 seconds.

One last note on this guide to Shaman healing. Never forget to imbue your weapon with Earthliving. The proc is quite nice as it heals the target of your last crit with a pretty nice HoT, and it costs zero mana! You gotta love free heals right, that doesn't cost a CD, a Global Cool Down, or any mana. On top of all this it increases your bonus healing by another 150.

Glyphs

There is a little bit of leeway in the glyphs you choose, and it depends on your healing style and role. The glyphs I heal with, and I recommend are:

Glyph of Earth Shield
Glyph of Riptide
Glyph of Chain Heal

You can swap out one with either:

Glyph of Healing Stream
Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave

The problem all 5 Shaman greater glyphs are so awesome it is hard to pick one. If you are mostly raid heals, I would recommend the top 3 glyps, you could loose Glyph of Earth Shield for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave to increase passive raid heals. If you are mostly MT heals I would switch Glyph of Chain Heal for Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave.

I hope this gets you well on your way to healing through Ulduar and beyond. Happy healing!

I work in IT.

I have been working in IT for, well it seems like forever. I have had many jobs in IT, and in every organization I have worked IT is pretty much below the janitors in level of respect. Three years ago I got a job with my local county. It is a strange place. The staff treat us with respect. They love us. When they do something stupid and we have to come fix their computer they send us baked goods as an apology. When we do something out of the normal daily grind everyone makes a point to thank us. We are worshiped as IT Gods. The most bizarre organization I have worked in I tell ya.

Today, I received an email from a user at one of our branches, stating that a computer that we replaced the front USB plugs on has once again gone defective. This is how she reported it.

Bad bad 303
Has yet again,
Lost its’ programming
For the USB

I opened admin
Plugged in a flash
Added the driver
With nary a clash

Restarted the beast
On the same day
Was able to use
In the normal way

Next day no good
Bad bad 303
Again had lost
Its’ USB….

Now mind you I do work in a library, and librarians are strange ducks, but i just got the biggest kick out of this.

p.s. unfortunately there is not a hot librarian in the organization, but one can always hope that there is one in library school waiting to make it to the big leagues.

In which I Fail Epically.

Way back in the day (like Classic back in the day) I played an Undead Warrior. I leveled to 60 fairly quickly 15 days /played. I tanked A LOT of classic raids. I really enjoyed tanking. Along comes BC, I get a new job, get home from work two hours later than I used to, and I am not an hour and a half late for every raid night. As you might guess, this doesn't work for me, for the guild, for anybody.

After many days of contemplation, and discussion with the guild leadership I left the guild (Hallowed Arcana, I still have an Alt parked there so I hang out sometimes) and joined Ex Obscurum. They are a great guild, and they raid much later than HA did. Win-Win. Except they did not need a tank, they had tanks coming out of the wood work. They needed DPS, I had a DPS. It worked for both of us. I ran DPS with ExOb through BC up to and including Illidan, pre nerf. It was good. I got bored with hunter DPS, and completed leveling my Shaman to heal. I healed a lot of Kara alt runs, and some ZA main runs, but never any real raids until Wrath came out.

Any way long story short (I know too late, but you needed the back story). I have a special talent for wiping raids. I mean epically! Like sending my pet into Mags, attacking his captors, starting the encounter with only 1/2 the raid in the room.

Following this trend of Epic Failure, I have my little 73 warrior parked in Dalaran, He has the Heirloom 2h Axe and Shoulders that he shares with my DK. I had a little time after doing daily's last night and bed, so I thought I would run a quick AV or two with my warrior as you get a crap ton of XP even with a loss now.

Well 8 minutes into AV, I am charging other players, Thunder Clapping Auto-swinging, and shouting, but for some reason I am unable to use any of my abilities. I think WTF! I can charge, I have rage, I can auto attack, but no heroic strike, no execute, no bleed effects.

This is when I realize I have no weapon equipped, no shoulder armor on nada. I also have no backup weapon in my bag. Nothing, zip, zilch. I spend the rest of the AV running around trying to help, but not. Warriors with a bow, goblin rocket launcher, and fear on 5 minute cooldown not terribly helpful.

This is how I Epic Fail! Can you top that? I don't think so!

Weekend Update.

The boy kicked ass Saturday, they won 6-0. Other coach looked like he would have a coronary from screaming. First goal was 10 seconds in, 25 minutes into the game, our coach told the boys to stop scoring. At half time he said only forwards are allowed to cross the mid-field line, and we still scored 2 more goals. That was two of our boys vs. 11 of theirs and they still scored.

Got the pond done, will get new Koi and plants next weekend to fill it.

Got the trailer loaded for the dump, but havent gone yet. Arms too sore from moving a literal ton of rock around the pond.

Didn't get to the pool repairs, maybe next weekend.

Didn't get into Uldaur, as a matter of fact no WoW till Sunday about 7:00. But did get into the Undying run of Naxx. Someone dropped before the first boss, so we are doing a 9 man undying. Two wings down still no deaths.



Never got to writing Shaman guide post. So I guess I will have to do that this week at work.

But I did get down to the brewing supply store, and bought enough Whites Labs California Ale yeast to brew 15 gallons. Also got a new recipie for a Honey Stout. Will make that one this week so it is ready in time for Thanksgiving/Christmas. Nothing better than a nice stout for those cold California winters, you know the 65 degree days that are so miserable.

To do list this weekend.

In no particular order, except the wife will make sure anything WoW related is on the bottom of the list.

1.) The Boy's first soccer match of the season. Against the team who we refer to the coach as "The Yelling Coach". As in at a game last year heard yelling at his son "What the hell are you doing! Get your head out of your ass! Do that shit again and you are benched!" Yeah he is our favorite coach to play against.

2.) Complete reconstruction of the koi pond. Hopefully by Sunday we will have water in it, and maybe even a picture to show of my garden. It used to be beautiful, but I have been angry at the garden since a Blue Heron landed in my pond and ate $2000 worth of fish.

3.) Make a dump run. Finally get rid of all the crap in the alley leading to my back yard, rebuild the fire wood storage box and clean the garage.

4.) Find and fix the pipe leading to the pool filter that is draining all the water from my pool.

5.) Finish writing and post the leveling guide 40-60.

6.) Get in and down Yoggi with the guild tonight and/or tomorrow night.

7.) Relax.

Guess what 3 items on that list they wife will go out of her way to keep me from doing this weekend?

Valkyr Twins, or How I fail at clicking

Last night after helping the boy with homework, soccer practice, taking the dogs for a walk, finalizing plans for this weekends reconstruction of the Koi pond and being forced to sit through the first half of "So You Think You Can Dance" with the wife. I sat down to a little bit of WoW. I hoped to get a few daily's done and make a bit of gold. I still have two more epic fliers to buy you know.

Before I finished loading into Dalaran I see a group invite from the guilds main pally tank. Not to be confused with our main warrior tank, or our main deathknight tank, or our main bear tank. I accept, than ask...uh so what am I in group for?

They summon me into the coliseum, and we are on the Twins fight. I REALLY like this fight. I think it is a unique boss fight. It is a lot of fun, it is not just tank-n-spank. There are a few phases that require everybody to do something other than sitting there and DPS'ing or healing. It is not a terribly difficult fight, just all around kind of fun.

A quick summation for those that have not done this fight. There are the twins. One is light, the other is dark. Light gives fire damage, dark shadow. There are 2 light portals, 2 dark portals. Before the fight starts you need to get either a light or dark debuff. I don't know really who gets what or how to split the group, because I am just a lowly healer and the debuff doesn't really do anything for me.

When the fight starts 1/2 the raid is on light 1/2 on dark. At some point the portals spew forth light and dark balls. If you have the light aura catch the light balls, dark catch the dark balls, this gives you a stacking buff, when it gets to 100 it does something uber. I am not sure what it is, again because I am a healer and they do not do much for me, so I mostly ignore it. If you catch the wrong color ball it hurts.

This fight has a LOT of sustained raid damage. Like I just spend the whole fight spaming chainheal, earth shield, and riptide on every cool down. (BTW, with a glyphed and 2 piece t8.5 it is super awesome that I can have riptide on 4 targets at once)

About a 1:45 into the fight one of the twins will do a special ability. It is hard to miss, even if you are running no boss mod. Blizzard was kind enough to put in a raid warning, that says hey moron, something bad is about to happen.

This is where the I fail at clicking part comes in. If you have the light aura, and the dark twin does his special you die, and vice versa. Remember those portals from the beginning of the fight? If the dark twin is doing his special and you have the light aura, you need to run to a dark portal (hehe dark portal) and click it to change your aura.

We wiped 2 times last night during the fight. I died both times on the first special because every time I tried to click the portal, I targeted a boss. the camera was kind of wonky and killed me every time. Even the 3rd attempt when we brought the twins down, I died to a special because I just couldn't click the portal.

So this week I have learned I need to L2Raid, because I stand in the fire, and I can't click a portal.

Koralon the Flame Watcher, or loot Pinata part deux.

Last night I had one full hour of uninterrupted WoW time. Yes folk one FULL hour!

I tried to make the best of it. As I logged on I see scroll through guild chat, "Anybody want to heal H ToC? We have a full group sans heals, and ready to summon." I can't believe the luck. within 2 seconds of logging on, I have a full group G2G. We smash up H ToC in less than 30 minutes. As I land back in Dalaran to sell off the crap that dropped that no one could use I see another message in guild chat. "Starting 10 VOA, anybody free?" Again I say yes, I have at least 30 minutes ow WoW time before the wife starts nagging.

I let everyone know I had not had a chance do do the new boss yet. No big deal they say. Watch the raid after fire breath AOE, and don't stand in the fire.

I think, what do you guys think I am a moron? I have been raiding for a number of years. I know from not standing in fire.

Raid starts, flame breath, heal raid up...WTF I am dead! pst...raid leader> Skraps, you stood in the fire! I call shenanigans. There was no fire.

Recover from the wipe, flame breath, heal raid up...WTF I am dead! pst...raid leader> Skraps, you stood in the fire! I call shenanigans. There was no fire.

Do this one more time, and I still say there was no fire. I just couldnt see it for some reason. I am told to go update DBM, I do. Now Raid starts, flame breath, heal raid up DBM flashes warning on screen "Hey moron! You are standing in the fire!" I move, continue healing and we clear the place out.

Now other than the invisible (at least on my computer, other people tell me they see it no problem) Koralon is a very easy encounter. I really expected/hoped that the loot pinata raid would get a little harder after Emalon, who when he was new was quite difficult. There was raid coordination required that was tough, especially if you were in a PuG. But Koralon, cream puff.

Just don't stand in the fire!

Are you ready to heal Heroics and Raids?

Part 1: Gearing Up

When you first ding 80 the first thing people want to do is jump into LFG, or guild chat and shout I'm 80 now! Lets do a heroic! Sometime it is raid night, and you get an invite. Does that mean you are ready? Not really. I would like to preface this post with a disclaimer I do not believe healing is any harder or easier than DPS'ing or Tanking. It is different from the other roles in it's own ways.

When you are a tank it is pretty easy to know if you are ready for a Heroic or Raid (not accounting for skill). There are two pretty easy metrics to measure against. Are you Def capped? and do i have enough health? There is a few other things like mitigation, expertise, block etc. But those two are pretty much what you need for Heroics, Raids are another story, and I haven't been a tank in a long time.

When you DPS it is even easier to know when you are ready, and you can even be carried by party members that out gear the encounter. Basically all you have to worry about is do I have enough health to survive whatever AOE the boss spouts out. If you are not being helped by a guild that is willing to carry you until your gear is up to par you also have to worry about can I do X DPS?

When you first ding 80, before you get your first Heroic group you will want to look at a few things.

1. Is my bonus healing high enough? (Spell power) When looking at this do not forget your Earthliving on your weapon, and drop your totems. I would shoot for 1200-1400 spell power for your entry Heroics. (CoT: Strat, VH, UK) 1600+ for your advanced Heroics. (everything not in that first list)

2. Do I have enough mana? (Intellect) Intellect is an awesome stat for Shaman not only do we get (I think) 15 mana per point for every point of Intellect we have we get a bit more crit. The more Intellect the better. To start heroics you are going to want 13k-15k mana.

3. Can I regen enough mana to make it through a boss fight? (MP5) Just throwing out a number, I think I started heroics with around 150 MP5. This was acceptable, but got a little scary on some of the more mana intensive bosses. This in conjunction with Water Shield, a mana pot and a well timed ManaTide should get you through any heroic boss. (Maybe not HToC, Black Knight is a pretty long fight, with LOTS of burst damage at the end)

While the skill > gear > skill debate will rage on forever. There is no denying that even the most skilled healers will never clear Ulduar in greens. You NEED certain stats to survive an encounter, to have enough mana to continue casting your spells, and frankly to keep people from laughing at you.

Later this week I will discuss how to heal, in my scathing two part expose on Shaman Healing.

WoW Lovin' over the weekend

I finally had some quality time with my favorite MMO over the weekend, but didn't really do any thing. I am kind of on a mission to finally get my rep with the tournament up to exalted or what ever you have to do to spend the Champions Seals. I realized this weekend that I have almost 75 Seals, and a crap ton of non-combat pets I want to buy. I ran HToC every day this weekend on my main and my hunter alt, but alas no loot was to be had for the hunter. As a mater of fact, all loot that dropped was sharded. We got cloth when we had no one to wear it, we got leather with no rogues or ferals, we got plate with the bear tank. All in all I think the instance has a grudge against me.

I also ran it about 20 times on normal with my hunter looking for any upgrade. What I learned, I really suck at hunter DPS now. Even in my mix of Nax gear I out DPS my shaman, but I still barley hit 3k DPS. My Shaman hits about 2.8k DPS in my Elemental set, but that still is mostly healing gear, with my +hit coming from rings, trinkets etc.

I have gotten to the point with emblems of conquest that there are no upgrades I can purchase for my main spec. I have enough right now to buy the tier head and chest for my elemental set, I think I might have enough to buy a ring or neck too. So hopefully in the next week or two I will have gear to DPS at Ulduar level as well as heal.

Oh, and I am embarrassed to say, but I FINALLY picked up this Achievement. I know, I know, that is something I should have had a long time ago, but I have horrible luck with ring and trinket drops. I picked up this ring Friday night and finally had all slots over 213.

Yesterday was a no WoW day for me, as I spend the day digging 12"x12"x32" holes all around my back yard trying to find where the water lined on my pool have broken. You would think it would be as easy as digging a hole where the yard is wet. It isn't. I think at some point I might hire one of those guys with a camera to find the hole so I can just dig there. The one good thing about digging holes, the dogs were in heaven! They love to play in the mud.

Hope everyone had a great 3 day weekend, and I will talk to you later this week.

Why I have not played WoW this week

Well I am feeling lazy today, and haven't played WoW this week, here is a list of excuses, er reasons.

1. Soccer season is in its third week, and I am spending a lot of time driving too and from soccer practice and kicking balls at the boys head in the yard in the evenings. Last year the boy was a full back/defender. This year he is a striker. He scored four goals Saturday. I have discovered that the 14 year old testosterone driven soccer player is not the timid kid he was last year.

2. Boy Scouts. Sure they say come volunteer to help out, it is only about an hour a week. They are all damn liars! I thought Boy Scouts were supposed to be noble and honest and all that crap?

3. Trying to keep the girl out of jail. So my 20 year old daughter is not wining any awards in the smarts department right now. She got a ticket for a broken tail light, driving with expired registration, no insurance and she left her license at a friends house. This all led to a $700+ fine. After many hours of arguing with the wife about how many more time we can bail the girl out we (the wife) decided we would buy her one month of insurance and pay to register her car. But the girl was required to go to court yesterday and talk to the judge about lowering her fine, request service hours to pay the fine, and get a job. Guess how many of those things were done? Yep none. She got to the court house, was told by the clerk it would be at least two hours to see the judge, and she had plans to hang out with friends, so she asked for 30 days to pay and left. Did I mention she does not have a job and no way to raise the $700? Yeah it has been happy times on the home front.

4. The job. Now don't get me wrong as far as jobs go, this one isn't too bad. My actual title is Information Technology Specialist III. It doesn't really say what I do. I work for the local county library system. I am a systems security administrator, Cisco network admin and light unix admin. It is a job. Mostly I wait for things to break. This can be days, or weeks with no "real" work, just busy work and projects. This week I have been working my ass off. I just complained to my wife last night I had to work ALL day yesterday! Tuesday I came into work at 8:00 am, and got home at 8:15 pm.

5. The wife. The lovely wife, is a teacher. She teaches High school. She is a very lucky teacher in that she gets to teach her very favorite things in the world. She teaches Drama, Dramatic Productions, and Dance. So the kids she teaches actually want to be in her class. She is THAT teacher you may have had in high school, that not only treated you as a person, but had an amazing impact on the rest of your life. I started playing WoW, because the wife would on average be at school until between 8:00 and 9:30 every night when she was producing a show, and she produced a play, a musical, at least 2 dance shows, a student directed show, and a talent show almost every year. This left me with two options, go hang out at high school, or get a hobby. I chose WoW. Well now that the boy goes to school with mom every day she has vowed to never be home later than 6:00, and to her credit she has been sticking to that target. But this cuts into my WoW time. This isn't a complaint because all things considered, I'd rather spend time with her than a dumb video game. But it has hurt my progression with the guild.

So enough whining from me? I hope so, and since it is Thursday, one of my guarenteed WoW nights, I hope to have something WoWish to post tomorrow. Who knows maybe I will finally get into a ToC Raid?