It has come to my attention that on the PTR, there is no longer a requirement for every member of a raid to have their Magister’s Key to enter into Kara.

Why, oh why are people complaining about this?  Here’s a quote from the Blizz Forums

Screw people and their alts. If you wanted to help out players and their alts, you’d make things account-wide. (Including Badges.) Removing the Kara requirement just means that as a whole, we’ll see three times as many crappy guilds recruiting for Kara and what few good players there are being snapped up by them. 

I mean seriously, the good players will not stay in bad guilds for long. It just doesn’t happen. If I were to for some reason, leave the guild of which I am an officer, and join another guild only to find out that it is made up completely of people who cannot play, I’d /gquit and find a real guild.

People don’t look at the larger picture. As soon as RotLK comes out, Kara will be about as useful as UBRS is now. It’s a nice place to grab some XP, but does anyone take it seriously anymore?

One quote I found rather poignant was this one.

people will be farming badges after 2.4 where is the best spot to do this?

It strikes a chord, but it’s still not exactly right. Sure, My alt will have a great time running through Kara with the A team, gearing up and getting free badges every week, but Would it be that difficult to run 5 instances before Getting into Kara? I think not.

So, why, if not the easy badge farming is Blizz making this change? The same reason that they removed the SSC and TK chains, and they’re removing the MH and BT attunement. Get more people into the content that they made, before it is obsolete.

How many millions of players never got to see Naxx? They don’t want to make that mistake again.

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This is the first in my series of Healing Strats, I’ll most likely be doing one of these posts once or twice a week, so as not to bore you with weeks straight of nothing but healing strats.  For people who use this. please post feedback to see if it’s working for you! Please!

High King Maulgar

High King is the first boss in Gruul’s lair. He’s one of two, the other being Gruul himself. The fight is rather daunting the first time you come up against him. Even after reading strats and watching videos it’s a hard fight to get right the first time. So, You’ll probably wipe a few times before you get the pull right.

That’s not really our concern though, Our concern is what to do once you’ve gotten the boss and his adds pulled. High King comes with 4 adds, which all need attention in some way or another, which means some sort of “tank” healing for 5 targets, and raid healing as well. Let’s go over the adds and their tanks really quick, so we know what we’ll be healing.

Krosh Firehand
Krosh needs to be “tanked” by a mage with at least 10k HP, who will spell steal Krosh’s Flame Ward Shield.

High King Maulgar

A single tank with at least 15k HP.

Kiggler the Crazed

Either a Druid for Polymorph immunity or 2 Hunters switching off.

Blindeye the Seer

A single Tank

Olm the Summoner

Strangely enough, a Warlock… Enslaving a pet to do damage on the boss, and another tank class.

This tells us we have 3 conventional tanks to heal, a “mage tank”, a “boomkin tank”, or 2 “hunter tanks”, and a “Warlock tank”, plus the raid. How many healers will we need? One healer for Krosh, One for Kiggler, One for Olm, One for Blindeye, 2 for High King himself, and one on the raid. That’s 7 healers, at least. Some groups put 2 on Krosh, or Kiggler, or add a raid healer.

So let’s look at specifics. Again, this may not work for your raid group, but we’ve found it works well for us.

First off, is Blindeye. He dies very fast, and does almost 0 damage. Make sure to focus on his tank, but be ready to swap off to heal any of the other tanks or the raid. Any healer can do this job well, Any class that can heal – even if not specced for it – can do this job, but I’d only suggest a feral druid if you need to go down that route. You’d be wasting mana for anyone else.

Next There’s the Mage tank. He’ll be taking lots of spike damage. Healing him to full is a priority. We’ve gone a few different ways with this. The first option we use on this tank is a Druid. Keeping Lifebloom up constantly, with rejuv and regrowth when needed. You will need to Swiftmend after spike damage. You may even need to Nature’s Swiftness/Regrowth/Rejuv/Swiftmend, depending on your mage’s HP and your +healing. When I started healing the Mage tank I had about 1500+healing fully buffed. So anyone in Kara Gear should do fine. The second option we use is a Pally. Those huge heals a Pally can throw out fill the HP bar every time, and he can fill in with smaller heals when needed. If your guild wants to use two healers on the mage tank, a Druid and Pally are a great team.

For Olm, one healer should be sufficient. Heal the tank, and the enslaved pet. Be ready to heal the Warlock if the pet gets loose, he’ll have Aggro from the pet. A Priest or Paladin works best for us here, they have some great heals to soak up that damage.

Kiggler, is a little tougher, because he’s the last add killed usually, but a single well geared healer should be sufficient. Once again, we usually use a Pally here, but any healer can do it. Kiggler should go down shortly after Olm and Krosh, but make sure someone knows to stay nearby to help out on his tank.

Now for Maulgar. His team starts out small and grows as the adds go down. We usually start him off with a Druid and a Priest. HoTs HoTs HoTs! Lifebloom, Rejuv, Renew, should be enough for the first part of the fight, with larger heals thrown in when needed. Once Your raid has Olm and Krosh down their healers should all come to the Maulgar tank. Once Maulgar gets to 50% you’ll have to be very aware of his Intimidating shout. This’ll stun the MT, and another tank will have to Taunt him over, and you’ll have to change healing targets. One of your member should also be healing anyone who gets charged.

Last but not least, Raid healing. Chain heal FTW! This is where we let our Shammies shine. One or two, it usually doesn’t matter for us. Make sure that chain heal is hitting as many people possible.

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Ok, now I’ve seen this done in a few other blogs out there, most recently a Vashj guide over at HoTs Tree, and I think it’s a really good idea. Most of the Boss guides I see are from a DPS standpoint, or a tank standpoint, and I hardly ever get good info for what I’m supposed to do as a healer. Usually you get “Healers stand here…” or “Healers with the ranged dps…”. I’d like to see if we could get some actual strats, with detailed instructions.

Now I understand not every raid is made up the same way and theres different ways of doing things. The way My guild does it is not necessarily the way your guild does it. We may have a different healing team makeup, different strengths and weaknesses. Maybe just a different philosophy on how things work.

So while the guides I’m planning on writing may not work for your raid, they should give you some ideas if you’ve never done a fight before. I hope that this idea pans out and helps people the way that I wished I could have gotten help. Reading guides on Bosskillers was great and all, but as a healer I always felt shortchanged.

As of now, my plan is to focus on the fights which I felt were the most complex for healers at the time of starting the fight. A High King guide would have helped me immensely back in June, where as now it’s just second nature.

I may go ahead and make a Kara guide as well, but I’m not making promises at this point. Let’s just see if I can keep up with this plan.

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So, I’m sure every blogger and her mother have already posted about this, but here goes anyway…

Over at MMO-Champion they’ve posted the 2.4 Sunwell “Badge” loot. I’m not sure what to think about it, honestly. My gear level is between T4 and T5, and really there’s only two items I looked at that interest me in the least.

The Shroud of Nature’s Harmony for 100 Badges. Leather Healing Chest. Gemmed it’s 136 healing, and it has more Spirit, Int and Stam than anything i am close to receiving.

The Gavel of Naruu Blessings for 150 Badges. Healing mace, Tons of healing, but no spirit… booo.

The rest of it was just… blah.

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This week marks our first real attempt on killing Kael’thas, and last night was our second night of attempts. The first thing I can say is that fight is supremely fun! All of the different things going on, you really need to be on top of them or you’re in trouble. So here’s a breakdown of our progression so far.

Phase 1: Each of the 4 adds comes out one at a time. Our first few attempts, we lost too many people kiting (kite the boss in tree form FTL). At this point, we’re doing it all very well. Our healers are moving with the tanks, we get at least 3 over to the Warlock tank before he needs it, and the only issue we had at all last night is out newest healer to the fight didn’t leave the Warlock tank early enough and let the Telonicus tank die. So, after the first try last night, we have this down. It’s simple anyway.

Phase 2: The weapons, Our two big problems have been: slow DPS, and people stopping to loot their weapon. We got through Phase 2 perfectly once last night, other than that, we’re slow. Our tank didn’t get his shield, and that causes huge problems. Rather than wipe it there, he had us practice. Good call. Next try, we pwned it!

Phase 3: The adds come out, all at once. People, remember, Thaldred will target you, and one shot you. Keep away from him. DPS him FAST! When we can do that, we’re good. the other bosses are pretty easy to handle.

Phase 4: Ugh those stupid eggs… 3 healers on the tank, 1 each on phoenix tanks. We actually got this down pretty good. It’s the whole idea of DPS splitting to down Kael’s shield that got our DPS in trouble. “Is the egg more important than the shield?” ugh… We got him to 72% or something like that. And we’re back at it tomorrow! hooray!

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Wow Model Viewer is the best thing on the planet!

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The Shared topic of the week over at Blog Azeroth is a pretty fun one, at least I think it is.

Q. How did you come up with your character names?

How great a question is that? I could type for hours on this topic, seriously. I’ve got quite a few characters, let’s start with the main, shall we?

Maerdred(70 Druid): What the heck is a Maerdred? When I first started playing, I decided my names were going to have something to do with either Phish songs or Stephen King Characters. That left me with tons of things to choose from, Just which one sounded cool enough? The first name that popped into my head was, of course, Roland Deschain, from The Dark Tower series. Roland, and pretty much every possible iteration of such, was taken. Deschain was also taken. So, I decided on Mordred Deschain; His “son”. Mordred was… taken. So I sat there and tried to change it atound to make something work. Maerdred is what I came up with. Why is it that people can never figure out how to pronounce it? Madrid(as in Spain), Mae drid, Mad rid… all wrong. Mare(like the horse) drid. “Merde(French) rid”. Those are the two ways I can explain it in type…

Just call me Mare.

Appollonia(60 Rogue): This came about for two specific reasons. My guild is called “Raging Daisies” and the original members are all named after plants/flowers. Well I didn’t want to be named after a flower, But I figured a name that sounds like a flower would be okay. So one day I was watching The Godfather, and Appollonia just clicked with me. Sounds like apple. that’s a fruit, that grows on a flowering tree… Close enough for me!

Milliegrace(25 Mage): This one’s easy. Comes from a Phish song called Fee. “Far away in another place/ A fading beauty named Millie Grace/ a gospel singer with pox on her face/ and a bamboo cane to help her keep the pace” It just sounded good.

Eldredjonas(16 Hunter): Also from the Dark Tower series by Stephen King. Eldred Jonas is the leader of the “Big Coffin Hunters” Rather obvious if you ask me.

Mistafrodo(10 Warlock): Obviously from Lord of the Rings. Sam calls Frodo “Mr. Frodo” throughout much of the trilogy.

Franque(7 Warrior): Franque is a Female Gnome with pink pigtails. “Frank the Tank” is from the movie Old School. It makes me laugh.

Finally… Windu(1 Warlock. Bank toon): Mace Windu from Star Wars. And he looks just like him! I just need a Purple sword.

Images incoming,

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Druid content? Say it ain’t so!!!

So, we’re sitting here at Kael and I’m thinking, I wonder what Gear I still need before Hyjal and BT.  Will my current gear get me there? I have 1835 healing, which depending on gems ans possible RE-socketing gems may go down or up soon. I have 363 Spirit unbuffed, which feels very low.

I, like most of you I am sure, have a spreadsheet sitting on my desktop with every gear upgrade and the size of upgrade. Mine lists +healing as the only important stat, I am thinking of adding a mp5/spirit matrix to it, but that sounds like work.

So, Pre Hyjal I can get my healing up to 1942 unbuffed if I get all of the drops I want. Unless there’s gear I ignored. Which there surely is. And of course, these numbers factor in only +18 healing gems, ignoring all other stats which I probably should not do.

There are 3 Badge items on my list, 3 Vashj items  and 1 Mag item. I can see me getting the Badge items within a few weeks, but With our current push on Kael, We’re not going to SSC for weeks, and Mag…. we have the laziest locks ever, and none of them ever raid.

I guess there are some “not the biggest” upgrade items from heroics, which is scary. But hey I could run a few.

If I figure out how to use Wowhead Tooltips I’ll add a list of the gear I want/need. Take a look at my current gear here and let me know if you see anything drastic that needs to change.

Thanks for reading!

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Today I feel I have to do a little bit of bragging.

Last night, we Killed Vashj! Server Alliance First. 3 weeks of trying, one night of Glory! I can’t imagine killing her pre-nerf. It must have been nigh impossible.

Last night we entered into SSC for our second night of Vashj attempts this week. Sunday we spent 2 hours and left because “It just wasn’t happening.” So, last night we all gathered, met 2 other Alliance guilds heading into SSC, which ROCKS! Go Go Gadget Progression! And we enter in to the den of evil known as Serpentshrine Cavern.

Our Raid leader goes through a dry run. “Tanks and melee do this, Druid and Shammy, heal them. Lock kite the strider, shadow priests and shammy dps it. priest, heal them. Maerdred, heal north. (Maerdred? Woo hoo! he said my name! Norf Side love!!!) Pally heal east, Priest heal south pally heal west. Mage 1 and 2 with Maerdred. Mage 3 and Hunter 1 east. Hunter 2 and Mage 4 south. Hunter 3 west.” OK. Bubble, Mending, Misdirect, pull.

And we’re off. Phase 1 goes Okay, Tank gets roots, Static and the melee takes a lot of damage. Nobody dies. 70%, woo hoo Phase 2 with nobody dead! 30 Seconds to strider, Strider east! DPS the strider! ok we got it! Tainted down! Core dunked! Good job! New Strider. Watch out, it’s fearing the Melee! oh man that’s a wipe. we lost the kiter.

And so it goes for 10 tries more. On to try 11. Phase 1. Warlock dies. Battle Rez! Melee healer gets that one. I still have mine. good deal. 70%. Phase 2. let’s do this! Long story short. We did everything right. EVERYTHING. Nobody died. Only had one strider up at a time. Dunked the last core just as we killed the final strider and naga, all within 2 seconds of each other. Vashj is free. Tank has her! Healer goes down! Maerdred, rez him! I’m on it! Go Go! Yoo’re not in poison are you? No! Pop it! Heal him! Innervate him. we’re good to go! everyone’s alive. Phase 3. Keep it up. Heal the tank! Get him to full! He’s Rooted! Pally take her! Heal the Pally! Go!!

And you get the idea. It was hectic. we lost about 10 people as the fight wore on, and I think 3 of them were from 4% to dead. Not a single one was a healer as far as I remember. I know at about 4% I started chanting “F$*@#ing A, F%*#ing A…” over and over again. At 1% I was chanting “Heal the tank. Heal the tank. Heal the tank” and when she died, I had to throw my headset off or go deaf. 24 people screaming at the top of their lungs hutrs!

My plan later on today or possibly tomorrow is to write up a brief guide on Lady Vashj. I feel after our 90 attempts I am just about an expert.

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I got this idea while reading a post over at Egotistical Priest, actually It was a guest post type deal by EgoTank. hehe.

So yeah, when reading about tanks and smart ones and dumb ones and main healers and off healers and dumb dps and blah blah blah… I started thinking about the concept of Raid Leading and Main Tanking. As a Raid Leader, it seems you would have to know EVERYONE’s role in the raid. Who does what when and why. That sounds difficult. I’m pretty much just a healer. I heal who needs it. I know enough about each fight to know when the damage will be coming, who it’s going to and who’s going to need the heals most. I know what to swap if we have a different group composition, and I can anticipate just about everything (even the hunter using multishot when there’s sheep… depending on the hunter, that is.)

What I don’t know is the finer details. I guess my question is, do I fall into a broad spectrum of raiders, or a minority? I know my job, and don’t really care about yours. I hear chatter about Mages sheeping, Rogues kicking, stun this, CC that… But as a healer, I hardly ever pay attention to why, or what exactly it is they’re doing. Maybe I should?

I’ve been an officer in my current guild since my 3rd, maybe 4th day in the guild. Now mind you, this was an established PVP guild which one of my friends got me into as a non-PVPer. They were transitioning into a PVE-PVP guild since at the time, the best PVP gear was coming out of MC and AQ40.

So, here I was a level 38ish Druid. My first real character. Coming from a leveling guild where I was handed GM-ship when the then GM decided to transfer and screw his friends, I was given an officership basically because I’m a good moderator and very good with administrative duties. So I pretty much deferred any of the actual leading to them. When I finally hit 60, I was asked “When are we going to see you leading raids man?” To which I could only reply, “No time soon, haha.” I didn’t know how to lead… I am sure if forced to try, I would do OK, but I’m not really that guy.

Three months of that content, I never fully learned the content. I knew what I was supposed to do and not do, I knew the basics of “Ranged stand here, Melee stand here, healers do this, but I didn’t know the ins and outs of a fight, and I never felt like a “leader” so I never really learned since I never felt I’d be asked to lead. Come BC and Outland and all new Dungeons and Kara and 25-mans, I went through the same thing. I never felt like I knew as much as the other guys, or maybe I felt like I was almost a ceremonial Officer rather than a Real officer.

As an officer, should I be able to step in for the raid leader? Should I know more of this stuff? I’m pretty nervous when people ask me for Healing assignments and generally tend to defer to the RL, or ask another healer who’s online. Is it my own perception that’s holding me back? I look at myself as “ceremonial” but if I looked at myself differently, would I have more confidence? Am I making myself a bad officer by not knowing these things?

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