Healer Proving Grounds

Last night, I wanted to see how far I could make it in the Proving Grounds. I was actually surprised on how easy it was to reach Silver.

As a healer, you run with a heroic dungeon group (tank + rogue, mage and hunter). Adds continuously appear immediately after the last (based on timer) and you have little to zero time to regenerate mana. Your goal is to keep everyone alive. WoWhead has a decent write up about the healer scenarios.

Things I noticed.

1. Vuhdo does not recognize the scenario tank as a tank. Not bad, but annoying because I like to use this different window to throw the Prayer of Mending frisbee at. 
2. Bronze is rather easy. Did it in my first pass as Discipline. Silver included a couple AOE options that require mitigation. I found myself throwing Pain Suppression on the tank when he got really bad. 
3. Mana was always an issue. I had to make sure my pet was ready for the mana regen. 

Gold has been impossible to complete so far. Reading WoWhead, it appears that an interrupt is necessary to avoid the Sonic Blast damage.

Silver-Thread Regalia

I've been tired of the way my PVP outfit looks lately. Really wanting to find a different top to fit in more with the 'ninja' look, I found and picked up the Silver-Thread Armor piece off the auction house.

I liked the look of this piece so much, that I have started acquiring other pieces of the entire set as I find them. I have a bid on a set of boots (or found I can probably make similar), already have the cuffs and the cloak. What I really want last is those pants. Unfortunately, they have a really, really low drop rate (0.3%) in Scarlet Monastery or Gnomeregan.

Off to run over and kill everything in SM:Graveyard, one more time.

Shared Topic - Hardmode / Heroic PVP

“Why not have ‘hardmode’ pvp matches? More difficult goals and the like you can sign up for?” (source)

Interesting idea. A queue-able BG that would allow me to take on harder opponents, maybe in a more complex environment and possibly have better rewards. Now that I have a good portion of my Cataclysmic Gladiator set (ilevel 393), I think this would be a lot of fun.

1. With greater requirements, comes greater dedication. Heroic PVP is going to have less trolls. If the iLevel requirement is set high enough, there are going to be less people that don't know what they are doing. Less people standing in the middle of Eye fighting over the flag when absolutely no bases are guarded. The number of people running around with Kid's Week orphans will be dramatically less. 
2. Complexity breeds excitement. Now, Tol Barad was a great concept. Complex PVP environment that required the teams to work together to effectively overthrow the incumbent. Sadly it was an open environment that encouraged everyone to participate because for some classes the rewards being BIS gear. This was unfortunately too complex for the average pug. It required that a majority of the players effectively know what they need to do and where to be. As time went on, puggers stop showing up and Blizz simplified the requirements, the ownership of TB changed more often. If Blizzard could have kept a version of TB exclusive to those that have the gear level, this could have been more successful when implemented. Maybe add features like having NPCs that work with you. Recruit a tank or healer if you want to go DPS. 
3. Greater rewards encourage participation. This year I am participating in a 3s arena team. Unfortunately due to timezone differences, we've only been able to meet about 5 or 6 times. The best reasons for participating in arenas, are 1) faster acquisition of conquest points, 2) heroic level arena gear and 3) cool titles that you can't get anywhere else. Unfortunately, if you're in my situation, the team is unable to meet unless I stay home sick, or don't go to work. 

Personally, I love the idea. This is what I thought Rated Battlegrounds were going to be when first mentioned in Cata. Unfortunately, it turned into a guild activity and I appear to be in the wrong guild for it.  Heres to hoping for changes in MoP to open up more opportunities for PVP.

Fun Site for Disc Priest in PVP

Facebook made a recommendation to me today that I found really interesting. The Heal Over Time blog by LilPeanut has some great posts on Disc PVP/ Arena and game awareness. You can see all her drawings via her Blog or her Flickr Stream.

Go Mog Myself - Admiral's Hat

I was just reading Poneria's blog post about her taking pictures for her Go Mog Yourself post. On GMY, they have various authors posting about their current transmogrification projects and why they developed them. I've mentioned my little mog set for my PVP set, where I try to look less healie and more melee in bgs. This seems have had a decent effect in that usually I am left alone when defending a flag.

For my raid set, I wanted something completely different. I wanted to be able to plop into a dungeon or raid and know that I wasn't running the wrong set. It was skimming the auction house, that I spotted the Admiral's hat. I immediately bought it up and started working on a matching set.

Thematically, I am looking for:

Admiral's Hat

1. Strikingly different than my PVP set. Gown / dress ok
2. Blue with Gold accents to match the theme of the hat.
3. Regal looking. I looked and there isn't necessarily a set to go with the hat. Not going to wear the Pirate Shirt along with my Navy hat. 

With those basic thematic ideas, I started skimming the auction house and my tailoring patterns to see what I had. These are the visible items that I started off with:

• Head - Admiral's Hat - Tailoring pattern - vendor
• Chest - Royal Gown - Scholomance drop (found on AH)
• Back - Spidersilk Drape - Tailoring pattern, trainable
• Shoulders - Mystical Mantle - U'goro crater drop. I am not in love with these shoulders yet. I've tried a different model, but this one seems to fit the theme better. (see pic). 
• Belt - Serenity Belt - Blackrock drop 
• Hands - Brightcloth Gloves - Tailoring pattern, trainable

I don't worry about my legs, feet or wrists; they are not visible. I had mog'd my off-hand recently so that I wasn't carrying around a skull popcicle. The Shadow Council Orb has  a nice spell effect where a yellow sparkly spins around it. I think the blueish color with yellow glow is a nice effect. 

Overall, I am happy with the total outfit. I wish that it didn't crop off my pony-tail, but that is the hat's fault. It does create a wee bit of a stir when I first drop into a dungeon/raid as people check out the stats on the healer in iLevel 48 gear models. (Yes, I see you all targeting me in my Vudo panel. I'll pop a shield on you, just so you know, I know.)

Satchel of exotic wtf?

The other night I saw the call to arms healer popped. My arena partner just signed off and I was up for a little random adventure. Top it off, they were offering that big sack of promised goodies.

Sadly, the cataclysm heroic dungeon I got was zul'gurub. IMHO, one of the worst dungeons that could pop. I stuck with it until absolutely there was no more people in the party. 90g in repairs and nothing.

So, glutton for punishement, when it pops up again, I hop on. ZG again. Another crowd that has never done the dungeon. First boss, tank dies quickly but I manage for 5 minutes to keep a rogue alive as he kills the boss. "Cool! You two should do 2s arena." Had to laugh. We proceed through the dungeon at a fairly even pace. A few more wipes as people learn the fights.

Finish off the last boss, grab my satchel of goodies!! and then peek inside anticipating wonderous, glorious, treasures. Ok gold... 24gold!! AND 2 HEALING pots. Healer got 2 mythical healing pots. Same potion that any alchemist can make with 1 twilight jasmine. I was really expecting, I dunno, a pet, some cool weapon, maybe a vanity pair of socks. Nope, not even enough gold and goodies to pay for my repairs.

I am really not sure if the call is going to be heard again. I can get 150 valor without the bills.

23 fights and still no rating... :(

My arena team is just starting back up. We've had a tough time meeting up this season. He's East Coast, I am on West. I don't logon most nights til after 9PM, so an early midnight for him. 

We've managed to run 23 fights so far, but still no rating. The issue being, so far we get a lot of random fights. Sometimes it's less geared people, but often it's been better. The other night, we hit a run (6 times) of melee dps ( several dk/pally or pally/rogue). When they focus on me, in cloth, I am a goner and quick. No amount of shields, or druid cc's is going to keep me alive for long.  I remember one fight, just constantly dropping renew, and running to keep dispels off us. My main job was to keep Nine not cc'd down. 

Ninebreaker is really good, I'll have to say. I feel that I am riding along on his coat-tails this season. (Check out his body-builder transmog pvp set).

When we do get in the arena with pally's, I am now supposed to throw more Mass Dispel around. The plan is to clear off some protective buff they have.. He says the pally-angel(?) is a buff.. :)

Hope to catch up with him again later this week and get those last 2 wins. Then at least we'll have a rating and can correctly get placed with similar rated teams.

Getting on My PVP Pants

With the arena season starting up, I wanted an advantage. OK, It's probably not much, considering the addons available to announce your opponents, but anything has to help.

I transmogrified my chest piece into a shirt. This has the net effect of making this priest look like a melee class. I am hoping this provides me an additional second or two before those dreaded "healer must die" addons tag me.. ha ha

Over all, I was working towards an outfit of mostly black (or red). Torn between the ruby shades for the head piece, but settled on the archmage headband.

Ex of Ninja

• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Helm -> Archmage Headpiece
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Mantle -> Archmage Mantle
• Vicious Gladiator's Drape of Meditation -> Spiked Chain Cloak 
• Ruthless Gladiator's Mooncloth Robe -> Demonweave Raiment
• Ruthless Gladiator's Cord of Meditation -> Mystic's Belt
• Vicious Gladiator's Mooncloth Pants -> Flame-Ascended Pantaloons (I liked the plates on the legs).
• Ruthless Gladiator's Energy Staff -> Tapered Staff 

12-19-2011

It sort of reminds me of the ninja outfit, except for missing the face mask. Maybe need to run some crypts? Nope, it's leather. and so is this and this. There's a fishing drop in Moonglade that is cloth, but it's blue.

I see on a RP site, that they made a ninja costume out of the Ebon Mask, which is leather, but a similar model, the Shadoweave mask (purple?) is cloth, and a tailoring item, but the pattern has been removed. One person in Guild has the pattern, so I'll check into the mats! :) Or the Outlanders Facewrap (red) which drops in Hellfire Peninsula and Hellfire Ramparts. I like the red as it goes decently with the red top.

Discouraging Valor, Encouraging PVP

4.3 is coming, and so are the currency changes. The biggest change that I see coming down the pipe is the PVP change to conquest points.

In patch 4.3 we’re changing the daily battleground (BG) to reward 100 conquest for a win (up from 25). In addition, every non-rated BG that you win will also give you 50 conquest. There is no limit to how many BGs you can run this way, up to the normal conquest cap [1350].

This means, gearing up a fresh 85, is going to favor PVP. 25 battlegrounds WINS later, and you could be sporting your first piece of iLevel 403 gear. ("Cataclysmic Gladiator" lol.. ) This sounds a lot easier than running   tons of pugs to get valor points, or even raiding end-game content in your greens..

Weekend Wrap-up

This weekend, happily was a great weekend for PVP. I ran around 10 BGs and we won about 8 of them. This brought in a good 1000 honor points, bringing my season total to 18000 (so far). The wins, also bought me 2 new pieces of gear (feet and back). Based on advice from my arena partner, I am buying items that I can enchant, before replacing my PVE gear. (i.e. back before trinket). So far, saved up 1150 conquest points towards the Ruthless belt (belt can be enchanted with a buckle). The remaining 500 conquest should come quickly, just need to win approximately 3 arena fights.

Healer got the most damage done.. 

Speaking of battlegrounds, I absolutely love Strand. Sure, we had a good crew this fight, but it was a fun close fight. When On defense, I started at the blue gate's cannon. Once the alliance had broken through the green gate, I ran up to Yellow and stationed on a cannon there. We slowed them down, but they had the rune in 4 minutes. On attack, I jumped on a demolisher and managed to get all the way to the rune gate before my demo was broken. Unfortunately we didn't have the graveyards, so I almost rez'd  at the beach, gy hop at 2 seconds left. Grab another demo and raced for the rune. Had to break down the red gate. In the last 5 seconds, we grabbed the rune and won.

My demo-driving trick? Easy mouse drive. I hold down both buttons to do the forward movement, then constantly spam 1 and 2 attack buttons. The combined attack of both weapons has the gate down in only a few seconds. Could have had the rune quicker, IF we grabbed graveyards on the way up the hill.

Finally, I am test driving a new Disc priest build. This one get's away from the atonement healing and focuses on straight healing. I still need to get used to using Desperate prayer when I am being attacked, but so far, it seems to easier to heal when being attacked.

PVP and Hallows Eve

Last night was fun! 

1. Maxed out my conquest points for the week. 'de rezz' now has a 729 arena rating, which isn't great, but is improving (last week score was 95). Followed quickly by a grand-slam 5:0 win in Arathi Basin for 25 more conquest. By end of next week, I hope to have my season 10 conquest chest piece replacing my raiding Tier-11 chest. 
2. Ran through 3 Headless Horseman dungeons (after 1AM local), this awarded 2 hallow's eve achieves (horseman and mask) plus picked up the caster ring for epic and cataclysmic epic. Plan to keep running the dungeon until I pickup the healer ring, plus the squashling for the achieves. At least now, if I don't see it by the end, I'll just buy it. 

Off to trick or treat tonight. Need to finish Outlands for the achievements. After Outlands, I should have enough GNERDS for the PVP achievements and then enough Tricky Treats to spill them out. 

Which Brewfest Trinket for Disc?

Pickled Egg proc glows

Brewfest is over and it's time to start clearing out the bags of all the trinkets from Coren. Over the two dozen runs through this mini-dungeons, I picked up all three of the 'caster' friendly trinkets.

Now, right off, the easy selection seems to be the Petrified Pickled Egg. It has high INT and procs Haste. Both seem great. Unfortunately it procs off healing spells and playing an Atonement Disc Priest, my key spell is not a heal, but smite, a DPS spell.

By Grifters (206 – 3) 16 days ago (Patch 4.2.2)Sadly Atonement do not proc it. :(

So, now do I run the strict STAM trinket, or do I run the CRIT trinket? I know the Balebrew charm is definitely going into my PVP set. Nothing better in PVP than having more life for the opposing team to take away. Unfortunately, according to those nifty stat weights on AskMrRobot, Crit is the least useful stat for disc, followed close by haste.

I guess the answer is none of them. Before next raid night, going to spend some JP and pick up the Core of Ripeness.

Stepping into the Arena

Last night my guild was on the last boss of BOT. Yeah, we're a little behind, but very, very casual. They were short a healer, so I got to step in for our typical druid healer. After a few attempts, we had Cho'gall down and I picked up a wonder new weapon, replacing my 316 Biting Wind.

With that, we called the night and I went back to battlegrounds. With the win last night in Eye, I had enough Honor points (>7250) to qualify for the Season 9 weapons, namely a new wand and the related cheese. Whew average i359 gear score!

not us.

OK, so I had been bugging an avid PVP player in guild about running a few arenas. He was interested. He stated that priests look to be top contenders in the arenas right now, it would be a good match. I wanted to do it, so I could pick up a big handful of conquest points. Running Battlegrounds for 25 points a day, is DREADFULLY slow.

Step 1. Form an Arena team. Go to the PVP menu (H), click on the Arena tab on bottom and then click on the 2v2 banner. Up comes the team banner interface, (color, icon and name). Populate the info, invite my 'tank' and save it.

Step 2. Fight! Now we're a team, invite him to join this little party and fire off the arena finder. Queue, accept, apply buffs and everything during the 45 seconds, then die once the gates open.

Step 3. Buy shiny new gear!. Unfortunately after a dreadful 1:7 run last night, I didn't rake in the conquest points that I envisioned. I got just around 100 last night for both the fight and the random battleground. At the moment I have about 1000 resilience. My team member suggests that I stack around the magic "3500" resilience.

Next steps. Going forward, I need to pick up more PVP gear. ATM, I have 5 pieces (shoulders, gloves, neck, trinket 1 and wand). The shoulders have the PVE enchant, not PVP. The gems are all PVE raiding, as well. With 4.3 coming soon (November I hear), buying up Vicious gear might be pointless. I need the gear, or else it will continue to be 10 seconds to death for me. Can't leave my druid fending off everyone all the time...

Healers Have to Live!

Check out this post by Cynwise about a feature in Healers Have to Die that highlights the friendly healers. It makes wonderful sense to highlight that your friendly healer is being hurt in a BG, but one commenter mentioned he uses the addon in raiding, as well, to pinpoint when they have healer aggro.

Bounty of Drops

During the raid last Wednesday, not 1, not 2, not 3, but 4 upgrades dropped during our run through BoT. OK, one of the drops, the pants, are an off-spec, DPS set upgrade, but still a nice change.

1. Bracers of the Dark Pool - replacing the PVP  Bloodthirsty Firewave Bracers
2. Wyrmbreaker's Amulet - replacing the PVP Vicious Gladiator's Pendant of Meditation. Of course, after the raid, I then completed the 40-ish quests to open the Fireland's dailies and picked up the i365 neck from there. 
3. Flame Pillar Leggings - didn't end up using, because I already had the crafted Flame-Ascended Pantaloons
4. Power Generator Hood - replacing Mercury-Coated Hood.

Finally, the Jar of Ancient Remedies also dropped off Maloriak, but I passed rolling on it, due to my other 4 wins. It WOULD have been a nice upgrade for my non-heroic Witching Hourglass. Of course, my raid leaders don't have an iPhone, otherwise the new changes to the AskMrRobot applet might have alerted them to the discrepancy. :)

Raiding Priorities

I've been told tonight, I'll get to heal for the raid group! They are going to reset all of the raids and run one of the starting environments. For most of the group, this will be old content. Seen and killed Magmaw a few times already. Hopefully this means that all the wonderful caster gear will be MINE!

To get prepared, I've been researching on AskMrRobot and LootRank. To be exact, I am taking the stat scale provided by MrRobot and using it on the LootRank website. The reason being, that LootRank has one option that I love, te All-in-One view. This helps me see what upgrades would be my biggest and best upgrades. Considering, I have 4 items that are iLevel 300 - 316, I think I know which to watch for, but still like the view.

LR Priority:

1. Weapon - Crafted, Nefarion then Magmaw
2. Trinkets - Crafted, Cho'gall then JP Vendor
3. Wand - VP Vendor or Chimaeron

Personal Priorities (low, or replacing PVP gear)

1. Helm - Magmaw
2. Shoulder - Altramedes
3. Neck - VP Vendor or Halfus
4. Bracers - VP Vendor, or Altramedes

I'll let you know if anything drops tonight. Or if I get kicked and replaced with a DPS toon.

PVP Bug? Or healing NPCs?

I just finished a BG, Alterac Valley, where we won. I was just overwhelmingly surprised, when I saw this warrior did so much healing!

Today I reached a 348 iLevel by equipping a PVP trinket. This replaced the mediocre (i316) Rainsong. I also picked bought off the AH a Mercury-coated Hood ro replace my Aurelian Mitre.

With these two replacements, I ran a totally pugged Lost City. First boss, all but the rogue died. Nice because he actually res'd us all. No drops that I could use, but very frantic fights. Got the heart racing, for sure.

First Heroic Success

Last night when the guild's raid failed due to lack of attendance, I bit the bullet and ran a 80%-guild heroic dungeon. We pulled Heroic Throne.

Everything went smooth, only 1 wipe and 1 additional death. Wipe on the Lady Naz'jar, I kept getting hit by the waterspout, which is basically a silence. So the tank died, bringing us all down.

Next death was on the gauntlet before Neptulon. I got tagged a few too many times with the curse, causing a quick death.

This was a bit of a cushy run. Besides being 80% guild, so we could all chat on Vent. I had 2 DPS that also self-healed; shaman and shadow priest. On the last fight, the shadow priest healed herself more than I healed the tank. Nice, but have to run another to get a better idea.

No drops from the dungeon, the heroic helm would have been nice. I did get the crafted pants, and the tank also created a sparkly 346 ring for me. Wow-Heroes has the heroic dungeons as on the 'difficult' side, maybe need to run a few more normal dungeons and upgrade to the jp helm?? Rather grab one from a raid. Magmaw has 2 upgrades that would be excellent drops.

Afraid of Heroics

70 levels of regular pugged dungeons, now that I have the gear score to enter a Heroic Cata dungeon, I am nervous to try. It's a pug, I really shouldn't care what people think. I've stacked enough spirit that mana shouldn't be an issue. Average iLevel 340 gear. Sure half my pieces are ilevel 333 and below, but the rest are i358 (crafted PVP), or above.

Why am I afraid of running heroic? Most groups running the early Cata dungeons are either new-85s (so they don't mind a few wipes) or they are raid epic'd, so they won't wipe in these dungeons. I know how to heal, and  I am working hard to improve my skills. PVP/BG for worry-free practice.

Maybe later this week.. The guild tailor should have finished the crafted pants. I'd really like to run a few Heroic SFK, there are a good number of healer upgrades in there.. LootRank thinks my next upgrades should be my weapon, and then trinket. For the weapon, I'd like to sit in on a Magmaw run, and hope to grab Incineratus. 900 JP would get me the 346 offhand. Another 1650 would get the Core of Ripeness trinket.

Grabbing PVP Fillers

Looking at my existing gear last Friday, I found that I had three i306 items that I could fill in with i358 crafted PVP items. For 60 embersilk and a dozen elementals (6 fire, 3 water, and 3 air) I was able to replace my green i306 shoulders and wrists with fairly appropraite gear (Bloodthirsty Embersilk Shoulders and Bloodthirsty Firewave Bracers). I could have also done the pvp neck and head, but plan to get the justice point head and the Firelands neck.

Anhuur

With these two upgrades and a quick reforge, I was ready for a run through normal Halls of Origination. Now at 2250 spirit, I didn't run out of mana, as fast. When I was out, I regenerated it quicker. I only had two deaths (no wipes), both the mage who seemed to like to lead the group. To my defense, both on boss fights (and there are a lot of boss fights in this dungeon), Anhuur and Rajh.

In my opinion, the hardest boss fight was Anhuur. This is the fight where the tank must jump down and hit the trigger and run back up. This creates two issues, distance and los. If I jumped I took massive fall damage and would need to self-heal. If I stayed up top, I couldn't heal the tank because of the distance/los issues. I'll need to try this again and see what works best. Maybe run down the stairs on the opposite side the tank runs down?

On with my questing in Hyjal. I picked up the pre-quest for Firelands, Call of the Ancients, off the message board in town. This quest sets the requirements for me to start those Firelands dailies. Of the 84 quests needed to complete it, I am at #49. Next stop Deepholm, so that I can get the shoulder enchants.. Wonder if there's a shortcut?? How quickly can I pickup a tabard? (Sending my alt to get some shoulder enchants from the Hodir. )