Happy Halloween

Illhoof Down

Just a quickie here: On our second guild try, my first, we downed Illhoof Monday night and with 8 players at the end. I was sacrificed when Illhoof was around 25%, then our shammy got hit with the next sacrifice. Got Cord of Nature’s Sustenance. The tough part for healing this fight is keeping the sacrifice victim alive: and I don’t have a good strategy for that. Probably takes more practice and alertness. I wasn’t the designated sacrifice healer (and be sure to have one) but I would throw an instant HOT to help out, but usually in vain since the person was dead before I could even get an instant on him. Luckily, we had three druids and so our combat rezzes were very helpful in this fight.

Illhoof Down

Just a quickie here: On our second guild try, my first, we downed Illhoof Monday night and with 8 players at the end. I was sacrificed when Illhoof was around 25%, then our shammy got hit with the next sacrifice. Got Cord of Nature’s Sustenance. The tough part for healing this fight is keeping the sacrifice victim alive: and I don’t have a good strategy for that. Probably takes more practice and alertness. I wasn’t the designated sacrifice healer (and be sure to have one) but I would throw an instant HOT to help out, but usually in vain since the person was dead before I could even get an instant on him. Luckily, we had three druids and so our combat rezzes were very helpful in this fight.

Curator is Down

It’s funny how something that had been so frustrating and seemingly difficult suddenly becomes easy as pie. We went in against the Curator last night and brought him down without any deaths. The key seems to be your raid’s formation: keep casters and healers spread out in a semicircle at the end of the hall. You need about 10 yards between each other to avoid transferring the flares’ arc damage. Also, this helps melee chase down the flares easier since they’re in a more centralized space. Take down the 10th flare before turning to the Curator in his evocation phases: as tempting as it may be to jump on him, that 10th flare must be out of the picture. It’s not a hard fight once you figure it out. And (drumroll please) Gillir got his Tier 4 gloves, very lucky indeed: Handguards of Malorne. And another bonus, Gift of the Wild III dropped from a trash mob.

Some Random Screenshots

Below the jump are some random screenshots from the past couple of weeks.

Yet Another Kara Post

We got the Big Bad Wolf for the first time and he was a tough fight. On a third try we got him down with only about 6 folks still alive; in fact, I actually died at the beginning when I was Little-Red-Riding-Hooded and promptly squashed. Yet, my bad luck turned into good fortune when these dropped: Earthsoul Leggings.

One thing to remember about him is that he will briefly target whom he is about to debuff, then turn back to his previous target, then transform the victim. Pitbull makes it easy to spot the next target because the unit frame will turn red. In fact, I spent my dead time calling out targets over TS (had to be of some use, ya know).

The Curator is giving us a heck of a time. I’ve read all the strategy guides I can, but any words of advice are welcome.

“Growing Blog”

I just noticed that this blog appears on WordPress.com’s “Growing Blogs” list. Nothing spectacular, but still cool. The reason for it is the L2P Treeform post which has been getting a lot of traffic (although I wish I were getting more traffic for something I actually created myself, but oh well, traffic is traffic).  Anyway, for any newcomers, I hope you find something useful.

Going to the Dark Side

No, I’m not leaving my main behind, but I am bringing up an alt who is a shadow priest. I’ve been playing Tsyra regularly the last few days and am enjoying her face-melting abilities. I leveled Gillir as resto (except for about ten levels between the 20s and 30s), so I haven’t been able to enjoy fully being a damage-dealer. Having an alt who is all damage makes for a refreshing change. Grinding is a snap. And so leveling should go quickly (and with the 2.3 changes, it’ll go even faster).

In other news, I healed for a guild run at Attumen the other night. He went down without a hitch, but this run was notable in that we had no crowd control and we ran it without some of the “usual suspects” of our guild, the veterans. In all my previous runs, we had three main healers since I was new to healing 10-mans, but this time we had two main healers (and our enhancement elemental/resto shaman as backup when necessary). I carried a a little over 40% of the healing, not counting the Lifeblooms that the targets are credited with. All in all, learning a lot and learning it fast (in fact, I’ve spent most of my post-70 healing in Kara).

One question I have now is how does Kara compare to heroics? I’m still working on my rep, so I’m not keyed anywhere yet, but when I finally get into heroics, will they be easier than Kara, harder, or about the same?

L2P Treeform

Saw this on the forums:

Update: According to Insanara, in the comments, this was created by Smoosh, out of EU-Al’Akir.

Kara Continues

Went back into Kara for my second time and we downed the Maiden. The key to that fight, as Karthis comments on my previous post, is that you have to limit the melee fighters or rotate them out, because the Maiden puts a beating on those guys. Last night, we had all ranged DPS except for the tank. Plus, as a healer you have to keep all your attention on the tank so that when her Repentance hits, the tank has enough health to live through it. As a resto druid, your HOTs will be especially useful here, so be sure the tank is loaded with them. Having a boss mod like CTRaidAssist or BigWigs, can help you know when she’s ready to cast Repentance, although it can’t tell you exactly when she will cast it. And boy, that 12 seconds of Repentance is a looooong 12 seconds, especially when you see the tank’s health dropping and all you can do is wait and hope the tank survives.

We then went on to the Opera and got Romulo and Julianne, which was a piece of cake (although this event seems to be the one the guild always gets). You can read the WoWWiki link above for strategy, but it’s not a hard fight. Keep the tanks up while they keep the two lovers apart and all will be well.

We called it a night after the Opera. Up next: The Curator.

P.S. I have some screenshots I’ll post later.
Screenshots after the jump…