Monday, March 10, 2008

Kara!

Z finally got his kara key saturday and we had a chance to go play in KZ last night with our old guild. it was a last minute "hey, we think we're going to raid tonight. wanna come?" kinda thing, so it was a little rough around the edges. we made a mad dash to the AH on the way to the meeting stone to stock up on consumables and realized that we'd never really thought about caster consumables before. ended up buying some [Elixir Major Mageblood] (which was a mistake, but Harl can use 'em later), the [Schematic: Mana Potion Injector] for Harl (finally!), some [Superior Wizard Oil] (thought about going for [Superior Mana Oil] instead, but thought we'd try it without first and see what the mana situation was like) and a couple old-school [Flask of Supreme Power]s (they were way cheap compared with [Flash of Pure Death] and it's only a 10 point difference in spell damage). once we were fully raid buffed we were looking at +918 shadow dmg. mmmm, tasty. was even better when we brought in a shaman later on and had a Wrath of Air Totem at our disposal; zomg +1019 shadow damage! we wish that's what our stats looked like normally...

as far as the run went, it wasn't bad. they had cleared through morose on a previous night, so we started with maiden and then went on to opera (wizard of oz), curator, shade & chess; they all went down on the first shot. it wasn't always pretty, but we got the job done. prince was a different story. we made four attempts and never got him below about 40%. not really sure why he was so much trouble, but last night was just not our night for prince pwnage.

but what about "teh phat lewtz"?! we thought we'd be sitting pretty, being the only dps clothie in the raid (no mages or warlocks), but the loot gods decreed that it would be all healie gear, all the time. meh. we ended up with a couple bits of it anyway; the [Blue Diamond Witchwand] because none of the other healers needed it and the [Ribbon of Sacrifice] due to a very unfortunate error by the master looter. we still feel pretty bad about that, but at least it'll come in handy if we end up having to heal our way through the arcatraz again. we also picked up our first 10 [Badge of Justice]s. now we have to figure out what to save up for...

speaking of healing arc... never. again. we ended up going in as a healer because we really, really wanted our 3rd kara key fragment and putting together a group was like pulling teeth. we ended up with a prot warrior, 2 rogues, an elemental shaman and a shadow priest in healing gear (a little over +900 heals at the time). it actually went better than we expected it to, partly because the tank was awesome and also due to the shammie backing me up with a couple extra heals when pulls got hairy (that guy was on top of his shit. we love playing with people like that!). we did have one wipe right before the 2nd boss (damn you, aoe silence!), but all the bosses went down on the first try. that said, it was ZOMG STRESSFUL!!!1! we don't know how you full-time healers do it. we spent the entire run staring at health bars; praying they would stop going down and start going back up. one of our resto druids friends told us that she doesn't even know what the inside of most instances look like because all she does is watch health bars. bleh. major props to all you healers out there, but it's definitely not our bag.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to be going to Karazhan for the first time this week too. I'm excited and a little bit terrified.

Bell said...

The whole "I'm just looking at health bars" is slightly an excuse. For 5-mans you can get away with that. For raids, you need to be more situationally aware. I look away from the health bars all the time to check the position of the hunter traps in relation to me, where the Big Bad Wolf is, how close to which side Netherspite is, etc. Sure we don't see as much of the room, maybe, as a dps, but we still need to be aware.

Also, healing as a non-heal spec is much, much more stressful than healing with a healing spec. The bars don't go down so much and sometimes you even have downtime to chill and wait. I healed BRD as a feral druid pre-TBC and pre-level-60 with my only healing bonus being Nurturing Instinct, and it was hella more stressful than almost anything I've healed since. It was also really fun, but the tenseness in my shoulders kind of detracted from that. >_>

@ambi - there's nothing to be so scared of. Kara should be fun! Just take it easy and get bosses explained for you, and you should start to develop your own rhythm.

Harl said...

@bell - totally. there is no excuse for not being situationally aware. to say we were *only* watching health bars was a dramatic exaggeration ;) in the midst of watching those bars plummet (and occasionally rise), we were also keeping track of all the mobs, making sure we were avoiding any aoe that we could, running around to maintain LoS on everyone (damn hallways), making sure we didn't trip over any of those infected corpses that spawn the worm thingies and making sure we were in a good position to fear bomb if needed. all the same habits we maintain while playing our hunter, really... we just don't get to kill things ;)

@ambi - it'll be great! like bell said, nothing much to be scared of and lots to look forward to. the mobs aren't any worse than anything found in heroics and the bosses, while they can be annoying at times, are generally fun to fight. it's an awesome feeling to be a part the team when a boss fight goes smoothly and everything just falls into place. may the loot gods smile upon you!