Glowwy Finger Wiggling is Hard

'Sup, guys, Bellbell here. I know a lot of the time I rag on healing because, well, I signed up to be a face-wrecker. I have this wonderful new polearm that's put my Crit through the roof, but I never get to use it because everyone is always "OMG WHERE ARE TEH HAELZ" followed by one rogue-ish fellow asking me why there were two healers in Bellwether's crew. Frustrating, no?

Still, if I'm going to do it, I might as well do it well, right? So, knowing Bellwether's beau is a rather pro Holy Paladin (and Paladin in general), I went to him with a question: How do you know when to use Divine Favor?

The following was the conversation:

Poise: It's an instinct for me, all I could categorize it as.
Poise: Just kind-of triggers every so often and I pull out a huge crit that heals for full without overheal.
Poise: Always the DF+HS+FL combo
Poise: Double instant cast, and if you're paying attention to SS, you can roll off the FoL as a 50%(+your holy crit) chance to crit.
Poise: Trigger on SS is static to an internal cooldown and swing timers of the units attacking the target so it's relatively easy to time.

My response to this?

/boggle

I have a long way to go before I can pull this combo out without thinking, that's for sure...though I'd still love to see the day when my healing gear isn't outstripping my DPS gear by a mile.

Proc'ing Over and Over and Over...

There is a new idol out, able to be purchased with 25 badges of Triumph. With the heroic daily and running Trial of the Crusader, both 10 and 25 modes, now would be the time that many people are starting to get it. What is it?

Idol of Flaring Growth

At first glance, it looks good. A nice 234 Spellpower for casting our most commonly-utilized raid heal? Definitely delicious. But there's something even more amazing about this Idol.

It has no internal cooldown, and has a high proc rate.

With one Rejuvenation ticking (and overhealing) on myself, I had no downtime from the first proc til I finally let Rejuvenation die. The idol might as well read "Here's a free 234 Spellpower so long as Rejuvenation is up! LOVE ME!!!" This is basically what it does. This makes it an amazing Idol, even if you're generally a tank healer. With just one Rejuvenation running, your Spellpower gains a huge boost.

Due to this mechanic, there is absolutely no reason not to grab this Idol before deciding to spend your Triumph Badges on anything else before it. The only instance I can see not using this Idol is during General Vezax, where you will need the cost reduction from Idol of Awakening.

In short: grab this Idol as soon as you can, and enjoy the boost.

Healing Lord Jaraxxus (10/25)

This fight may seem complicated due to the randomness of it. However, with a bit of coordination and communication, it's very controllable and doable.

To begin, my raid arranged itself in a circle around the middle, using the points of the star as markers. The areas directly in front of the instance door and directly in front of the boss entrance were left open. After that, two ranged each sat on points of a star to minimize spreading damage, like the chain lightning ability or the fire drops. Every person who became affected by Legion Flame then had an area to run straight backwards to drop their fire (Legion Flame does a DoT and causes you to drop patches of fire where you are standing that do heavy damage once every second for six seconds). We kept the spread of healers even, and monitored people for Incinerate Flesh.

Incinerate Flesh is a little bit of a weird mechanic in that your target will not noticeably be taking damage. The debuff absorbs 60k healing and decreases attack speed by 50%, and persists either until 60k healing is absorbed or fifteen seconds pass. If you don't heal enough, then the person will gain a raid-wide DoT for 3K+ every second for five seconds. And while this may not seem too bad, there is a lot of incidental damage going out, and this is so completely avoidable as to have no excuse for the person not to gain heals.

During the encounter, Jaraxxus will summon an infernal volcano. You should have one or two OT's responsible for managing these brutes. They have an AoE just for standing near them, so ranged should nuke them down and you should get out of their way. Try to recover quickly from any charges they get off and heal any people affected.

Jaraxxus will also summon Mistresses of Pain during the encounter. When he opens the Nether Portal, he'll gain Nether Power, a 20-stack buff that needs to be dispelled and purged and spell-stolen as quickly as possible, and at this time you need to watch the tank as he'll be taking more damage. The Mistresses of Pain need to be controlled as well as possible and kept away from melee. Ranged should power her down, as they can keep clear of her armor-ignoring attacks. The reason she is so hard to control, however, is the Spinning Pain Spike. This causes her to leap upon a player (kind of like the snobolds in the first part of the Beasts) and, well, hurt them. These people need to be called out quickly, as she'll pick them up and slam them into the ground for a percentage of their maximum health.

It certainly sounds like a chaotic fight, and it certainly can be. However, with a little bit of coordination, the chaotic, random side of the encounter is diminished greatly, and a win is much easier to obtain.

Good Luck!

A Call for Inquiries

I guess I must be doing something right, because The Elitists Podcast wants me as a guest! Shocking, I know. I'll be there to talk about tree druids and whatever else comes up, so it should definitely be interesting.

So, what do I need from you? Anything and everything you ever wanted to ask about resto druids or if you're curious about my opinions or just anything, send the questions in to Elitistpodcast AT gmail DOT com and I'll do my best to not bungle my way through the answers! We're planning on recording on Friday night, so get them in before then!

Thanks for your help!

Healing The Beasts of Northrend (25/10)

If you haven't seen the Beasts yet, don't worry! Healing the fights is extremely simple, and with just a little bit of coordination, you'll have them down in no time. For the Heroic Strategy, follow this link.

Gormok the Impaler
To start this fight off, pre-stack HoTs on the tank. There's not much else to do until he starts shooting off fire, so just keep HoTs rolling on the tank. The fire he shoots out is completely unavoidable, so be prepared for people to take a tick of damage when it lands. As long as they move out immediately, however, they should be fine. The fire sits in one place and doesn't move or follow you, so stepping out is simple. Stay at max range away from Gormok so as to avoid the silence from his Staggering Stomp, keep everyone topped off from fire damage, stomp aoe and face-eating snobolds (they quite literally seem to latch on like a face-hugger), and you'll have him down in no time. Tanks will be switching off with every Impale, but this shouldn't be too difficult to heal through. However, you will want to stack HoTs on the tank who still has impale going into the next fight.

Acidmaw and Dreadscale
This fight is like a tease to all who can remove poison. There's two poison types, a burning and a paralyzing, and the only thing that can remove the paralyzing is someone running past who is afflicted with burning to "burn" it off, or they'll be stuck in place, unable to move or act and taking ticking damage for quite a while. Since you can still move some while afflicted with the paralyzing poison, my guild had everyone afflicted run into the center, and the tank with burning would run over when Dreadscale was being range-tanked by our warlock (while he was sitting in the ground). Keep relatively spread out to avoid too many people being affected by the poison at once, and the rest of the fight is a snap. Roll Rejuvenations and Wild Growths on anyone taking damage, and they should go down quite easily. This is, in my opinion, the part of the fight that needs the most coordination.

Icehowl
This fight is pretty unique, yet still intensely simple. This is another fight you want to stay spread out for, since his breath attack can freeze whole sections of raiders in place. You can't control the direction, it's just something that happens. It doesn't hit too hard, so you should be fine. Keep people topped off from Whirl, and when he knocks everyone to the side of the ring and stuns them, look at the boss model. See where he is facing, and when your stun wears off, run away from that area. You'll have a speed boost, so for no reason should you not be able to get out of the way. If you don't, you die, simple as that. When he charges into the wall, he becomes stunned, so use this time wisely to top everyone off. Other than that, just keep people up from incidental damage and you should win this one easy. Also, watch out for Frothing Rage, though your hunters should smash that off right quick. If not, just heal, heal, heal the main tank!

That's it! That's all it takes. With only a few tries to coordinate poison, you should have them down in no time at all.

Epic Expectations

I have developed a little pre-raid ritual since joining Vigilant. If I am invited to go, it goes along the lines of panicking until the encounter starts, doing fine on the encounter, feeling better, and then starting all over again for the next one. I can't help it; I just get nervous about screwing up or not doing well. Managing to focus through the encounter despite being jittery is apparently a strong point of mine.

So, as I logged on and got a surprise invite into the raid forming for Trial of the Crusdar (25), I was definitely feeling a few butterflies. Brand new content, not a ton known about it, and here we were about to jump in headfirst. The raid had been formed early to give as much time as necessary to completing the bosses. We were stocked up on items and had our repair allowances increased in preparation for those learning wipes.

...And then we completed it in two or three tries, and went back to OS drake selling and Ulduar hardmodes. XT was more difficult than this with his massive (bugged) spawn packs. What's up with that? In ten man, it took maybe 20 minutes with only one wipe while we tweaked poison mechanics for a smaller group.

I understand it's going to be released week by week with new and more bosses. I also know the guild I'm in is top on Alliance side. I know, too, that this was normal 25 man, and heroic will be tougher. Still, it seemed rather lackluster. The yeti's mechanics, while interesting, were incredibly simple. The toughest part about the fight could be poison management, yet even that only took one wipe to coordinate into something workable.

On the other hand, I agree with Bellezza, one of my guildmates. She stated she preferred doing one boss (with only one loot drop, we tend to refer to the beasts as "one boss") without lag or crashes to having a whole instance that froze and died on top of us. In truth, that is really nice.

I suppose I will just have to wait for more bosses and heroic mode before passing final judgment. But so far, I am finding it to be a little disappointing. I can only hope when I venture into the new five man and vault, it perks up a bit.

Some Family Time

It was late at night, and my family and I were waiting for my grandparents to arrive from driving halfway across the country. My step brother was bored but didn't want to go to bed, and I was playing my hunter. He had a made an Undead Warrior with a broken jaw a year ago, and it was time to dust him off.

Yet, in the end, it was a half hour of learning to use the mouse. My little brother is not a big computer player. He likes console games and bike riding, and he gripped the mouse in what could only be called an awkward claw. I spent five minutes getting him to smooth out his grip time and time again so that he could move the mouse freely.

Most of the other time was teaching him to adjust the camera angle while running so he didn't keep running into objects and walls, and so he could see where he was going. In his over-excitement, I had to remind him to slow down, take his time, and readjust the camera angle until he could get used to the mouse buttons and what they did.

We had just gotten down "click right mouse button to interact with almost everything" and were going to start on keybinds when my grandparents finally arrived. His warrior immediately abandoned, I moved him to a safe spot to await the next time in the next year. It was a refreshing little break from split-second decisions and health bar watching, boss encounters and number crunching. It reduced the game to something infinitely more simple, and enjoyable in a different way.

Plus, it's fun to be able to play with one of my little brothers now and then without having to play a racing game.