So, back when T10 was first announced there was an outcry from druids.

They HATED how the helm looked.

And while I don’t have the T10 helm, I have one that looks like it.

That damn thing is HOTT!

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As many of you are aware, I started raiding again. Well, Wednesday night I got my second prolonged look at ICC25. We destroyed that place and I got four pieces of kit that nobody else needed, since my EPGP ratio is pretty much shitterific. I just hope we don’t have anyone else who needs the Leather Caster Helm next time it drops.

Well, Last night was a different story. We spent about 3 hours on Putricide and got him down to like 29% I think? Not entirely sure. As a healer, I’m not generally looking at the Boss. So yeah Wipe after wipe watching the dumb things happen. People getting rooted by the green ooze, then having puddles form under them. There’s only so much healing that you can do… People having hard time getting out of the way of the Malliable Goo in Phase 2. People not running when they have the red ooze (oh they’ll kill it before it gets to me)… Dumb stupid things. We wiped for 3 hours on one fight, and I loved each and every second of it.

Wiping on Putricide is nothing new. Guilds who claim to have him on farm still wipe on him week after week.(hint, he’s not on farm) Wiping and knowing why we wiped is a good thing. It was a learning experience. Some people were having issues with positioning and seemed to get it on later attempts. We weren’t constantly wiping because one person was doing something wrong, which is good. because if we were, Why didn’t we boot the idiot? Right? But that was never the case. Many of the wipes were bad luck. Some were human error. But all were understood to be what they were. A Learning experience.

I love 25′s. It’s an epic feel and I didn’t know I missed it this much. To me, wiping and learning is just as fun as killing everything and walking out with 4 more pieces of gear(and 1k gold worth of gems and enchants to buy). Next week, I think we’ll get the guy down. I think it’ll happen on the first night. I think this group is coming together and we’re learning our strengths and weaknesses(like don’t let Maer go Boomy). I think that we, as healers need to do a bit of a better job communicating, “hey this was way too easy, maybe we don’t need me on tank heals, I should swap to the raid.” or, “hey the tank’s going down, maybe I should focus on him too while hotting the raid as much as I can.” I think we all could speak up more, but I think some of us are new and afraid to. Let’s see if I can change that. This group isn’t scary I’m not going to lose a raid spot for speaking up.

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Don’t Be A Dick

Credit: Wil Wheaton. That is all.

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Druids are GREAT Tank healers. Stop telling them they’re not. Wait. No. Stop telling the good ones that they’re not. Sure, Paladins are great tank healers because they are not well equipped to heal the raid. Priests of the Holy kind are pretty good at both. Shamans can be good at both, but are optimal Raid healers. Druids can shine in both roles, based slightly upon spec,Idol, and Glyph, but overall a talented Druid can do well in both roles no matter what spec.

Stop telling people we suck at tank healing just because you want to stroke the Paladin’s epeen. It’s just plain rude. Don’t tell me I am not good at the job I like best just to get me to do the job I hate. I am an awesome single target healer, and I challenge you to a heal-off…. jerk.

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You know what? I was going to write a big long post about my UI and how I got it to look like it looks. But I am really lazy. So, here’s a nice simple, hey look at a picture and see what I did yesterday before I joined a raid. So here it is. a picture of my UI.

As usual, Click to embiggen.

If you have any questions. Just ask me. You won’t though.

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Sunday night was my first raid, like real raid, since last August. Maerdred got the call and went to ICC10 with the good folks of <Conspiracy>. I had been preparing for this for a few weeks mentally, and when I zoned in, the preparation went out the window. I was a giant ball of nerves. I didn’t know the fight other than what I had read on bosskillers. I didn’t know the layout of the Instance. I didn’t have a clue where to go. I took a shot and ported to the last place on the list, and boom. I saw 8 other raiders in front of me. Phew.

We loitered around for a few minutes as we were waiting for news on a tank. A couple of people swapped over to alts or mains, whichever was needed, and off we went killing trash. I didn’t take a moment to look around me. I was intent on not letting people die. Then we lost 7 people in one giant Trash explosion. Oops. Our bad.

Trash got cleared and we made our way up to Putricide’s Laboratory of Alchemical Horrors and Fun and then the fun began. Our Raid Leader asked who needed a refresher. I spoke up and said I would. A couple others stated the same. We listened to the fight explanation; it didn’t match with what I had read previously. I got even more nervous. We started the fight. It went well. I died. Not so well. I had SS, so I popped back up, and died shortly after, along with most of the rest of the raid.

We tried again four or five more times, each time losing due to some unfortunate string of events, generally with me dying before everyone else… (ugh) One time it was transitioning into phase 2 with an ooze attacking people. One time it was transitioning into phase 3 with an ooze up. Other times, I don’t even remember. What I do remember is the fact that everything stopped mattering. It ceased to be an issue. On the third try or so, I finally had a grasp on how the whole fight was supposed to go down, and I just did my job.

The easiest way to say it is I zoned in. I was fully in the moment. There was no distraction. Single-minded dedication to my task; that’s all there was to it. I had been out of raiding so long I hadn’t even recognized the feeling until I lay in bed an hour or so later. I had ceased being nervous. I knew my job, and I knew I could perform it, and I went about doing so in an almost trance-like manner.
This feeling actually intensified when we left ICC to head to ToC and take that place down a peg or two. I had stopped raiding on Maerrakech last august just before Blizzcon; just as the Twin Val’kyr were being released to the world. I had never seen them, and I had never seen Anub in 10 or 25-man modes. What I had seen, and seen a bunch of, were the Beasts of Northrend, Lord Jaraxus, and the Faction Champs. My comfort level on those three fights was very high, and the trance extended and deepened. I remember vividly seeing the Snobolds attacking others in the raid (I was never targeted). I remember watching Icehowl charge across the room and take himself out. I remember kiting Legion Flame away from the raid and around the edge of the room without a thought. I remember the idea going through my head that I was in no danger at all because, hell. I know this fight. It was figuratively like watching myself play the game from a vantage point behind myself.

I don’t remember ever feeling that before. Perhaps it was the knowledge that the rest of the raid severely overgeared the instance. Perhaps it was just the feeling of nostalgia for s group of fights I had done so long ago, and with great friends on my Horde Druid as a member of Unemployed.(love you guys!) Perhaps it was just the surreal feeling of raiding again. I’m not sure. But I liked it. I was in the zone. I was a healing God. I could do no wrong. Though that’s a bit over the top, and not really how it felt. It just felt good to be somewhere and actually contribute, rather than spend three wipes learning.

It was a great feeling to take the explanations of the Twin Val’kyr and Anub’arak, let them wash over me and feel that I knew exactly how the fight would go, and execute flawlessly. Well, flawlessly other than being too far away from the tank at one point when Anub’arak popped back up and he died, but I can’t blame either of us for that. Who knew?

All in all the night was a great success for my first night back raiding, and soon, I’ll be posting about Last night’s ICC raid, which saw my very first ever raid as a DPS, my very first kill of Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, the Gunship Battle, Deathbringer Saurfang, Festergut, Rotface and Professor Putricide. That last took a few tries, but we had all of that done in less than 2 hours with a couple Green DPS. I’ll tell you all about it later.

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I just spent 45 minutes writing a “Treewall” about the coming change to the Tree of Life Form.

You know what. It’s not worth it. I agree with many of my fellow Tree Bloggers. I like tree form. I use it because I want to. I am perfectly fine with not being able to cast offensive spells while in Tree form. Blizzard is deciding to change that. And fine. Their Game. Their right to do so. I’m not happy with it, but no amount of bitching is going to change it.

Overreacting today is silly. With the large volume of changes coming, I am sure all will make sense when we finally see the trees and get to play with specs. They’re going to do their best to make it make sense, to them, and we’ll have to come around some time. Why not come around now, and trust that if it’s game-breaking, that they’ll change it again? Why jump off the deep end and proclaim the end of the world? If anything, I’ll just play Balance in Wrath instead of Resto if I don’t like the change that much.

I’m taking it in stride. I obviously want to keep the best form in the game — the form which has been around for the smallest amount of time — but I’m not going to put out a hit on Greg Street over it. I’m going to protest. I am going to stand with the rest of my Tree Druid friends, but I am not going to overreact before I see what the final plan is.

Disclaimer:
This post is in no way suggesting that any of my Barky Brothers and Sisters are overreacting. I’m just stating my personal position on the matter.

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Solidarity Brother. They can’t do this to us! It’s just plain not fair! I am a Druid. if I wanted to look at my stupid clown armor, I’d roll a stupid clown Paladin or something.

Stupid clowns.

I support My fellow Tree Druids in saying I do NOT want to heal in Caster Form. I am a Healer. Not a DPS. Do they make Bears Heal? no. Do they make Moonkins Tank? no… then why make Trees DPS? Stupid freaking Blizzard. Thanks for breaking my Class.

I am with Keeva on this one. I Shapeshift, therefore I am!

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Penny Arcade has taken over Boston, and since I’m a stone’s throw away in NH, I got my ticket and I went down to see what it was all about.

I spent an hour on a bus, 25 minutes either walking or on a subway, 3 and a half hours in line, then another hour and 45 minutes in a chair in the theater at the convention center, first waiting for, and then watching/listening to Wil Wheaton’s Keynote. This was the reason for me to be at PAX and it did not disappoint. My $30 one-day ticket was worth it for that one hour of gaming humor, even if it did come after 5 hours of waiting in line.

My plan was to hang out after the Keynote and check out the booths, and then try to meet up with Averna and her group around 5:30ish, but by the time 4:30 rolled around I was pretty much itching to get out of the place. Maybe it’s because I was alone with nobody to talk to. Maybe it’s my general disdain for large crowds. Add to that the fact that I forgot to Add her number to my phone, and couldn’t get gmail working on my phone or iTouch… I pretty much just wandered around for a while, and wandered my way back to the bus depot to head home 2 hours earlier than I had planned.

Maybe next year I’ll recruit a friend or two, and actually go in with a plan other than, “get outside your comfort zone and go to a giant gaming convention alone you big baby.” While yes, I did “get out of my comfort zone,” and I did, “go to a giant gaming convention alone,” and was not “a big baby about it,” I didn’t take as much from the experience as I should have. I should have spent time in the console freeplay room, playing games I was interested in, or games I had never heard of. I should have stuck around and tried to get in touch with Averna somehow. I should have, and I didn’t. Now I know what mistakes not to make next time. Right?

Right. So next time, who wants to go to PAX with me?

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It looks like they’ve announced Blizzcon folks! October 22-23 2010. It also looks like this will be the first year that I attend. Watching last year on my notebook was great, but being there, going to the meet-ups… Well that’s why there’s a Blizzcon!

Tomorrow, I’ll be at PAX-East in Boston, and I plan on stopping by the Nvidia booth to chat up some unsuspecting Blizzard employees.(still unsure who’s supposed to be there other than Bashiok, but who cares? I’ll talk to a brick wall if it works for Blizzard) It’ll be my inaugural convention, so I am thinking it’ll show me what to expect at Blizzcon. I may be wrong, I may be right. Either way, Both are sure to be Amazing!

Some time this weekend I plan to post info about my first con. YAYNERDYGAMINGCONVENTION!!!

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