Talent Preview

I know, I probably haven't posted enough for my opinion to matter on this, but I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm not going to say too much, though. If you want to read a good, in-depth review of the preview, go visit Wow.com's Dawn Moore for the healy version of priests or Fox Van Allen if you're feeling a little darker.

Personally, I'm very intrigued by the new changes, especially all of those to smite/holy damaging abilities. While Smite spec still isn't quite viable, it's very very close. Not only that, I think it may be possible that a holy healing/holy smite hybrid build would work... kinda. Here is the build I came up with. If you consider all of the bonuses to smite (Evangelism, Chakra, Searing Light) that's a 44% bonus to damage! Not only that, a 20% extra chance to hit, meaning we wouldn't need hit in holy gear, and Atonement will allow for those chunky smites to heal while they damage. When you get tired of smiting? You can use Archangel to restore a little of your mana and increase your healing output for a few seconds. Now... let's do a little thinking... I've seen my smite now crit for 7k? I think. That's probably just me making up numbers, because I haven't smited in forever. But let's use it anyways... Say I do 7k with a smite. 44% more smite is 10k. That's a nice bit of damage, and if it crit, you can immediately normal smite with Surge of Light. Not only that, but, if you have Atonement, you heal a nearby raid member for around 4.5k. Now... that's not a huge amount, but it's a "smart" heal that immediately helps someone near the thing you're smiting (probably the tank if you're smiting the boss), and it's about the same as a Flash Heal for the cost of a smite. And that's just the current numbers that we see in Wrath.

Overall, I'm very impressed with the possibility of priests (i.e. ME!) being able to do a little damage with their healing. Not at the cost of healing poorly, but with good situational awareness and a little bit of luck, it may be possible.

It's been a long time...

It sure has. I got out of my habit of posting after raids, so I got out of my habit of posting. Basically though, I've been able to get into all the ICCs I wanted to and haven't had to worry about all the extra people (extra people also mean more people that have emergency reasons they can't go). But right now, I'm back to once a week raiding because I have so much shit going on right now. In fact, I'm using posting as a means to put off doing some homework. I still want to try and make a wordpress site just because it looks like you can do more with it (I'll admit though, I haven't tried to do too much with this site).

Uh... I'm back to being dual heal specs. I imagine I'll mostly just holy heal since I'm much better at it than disc priesting. However, I wanted to give our other tank healers (we only have three =X) the option of being able to miss... or bring an alt... or spec DPS for a fight if they want to. I'll admit, I'm probably not the best geared Disc priest, but I've gone away from enchanting or gemming regen simply because I'm good with mana management (generally). If I'm oom... something has gone terribly wrong. I'm trying to save up honor/badges so I can get gems to change all of my gems to SP.

Speaking of honor... I've also started pvping more (which is actually where quite a bit of my honor came from... and was spent on) because of the random bg thing and extra honor. If I know that I'll get *at least* 1k honor from every BG (quite a bit more if you win)... it's a great incentive to BGing. The other night I did 2 and got 10k... enough for a gem. Uhm... I would also like to post a shout out to the new people that have showed up in BoO in the past couple of months. They're all fantastic people (esp Krikket and Penitant). That's pretty much it. Now wish me luck on my homework =].

Updates

I have to go make dinners, so this will be a short post, but basically I've started raiding two nights a week and Jason doesn't seem too depressed about that... probably because I'm pretty good at paying attention to him at the same time (most of the time anyways). However... we have new people coming into the guild... most of them have healing specs, too. The guild is about to go back to only Core Raiders being able to go to raids, which makes sense, but I think there are already enough "Core Raiders" as healers to fill up a 25 man... plus all those people coming in, I feel like I probably won't have a good chance at being promoted. Which is fine with me, I suppose... >_< I just don't like this sense of anticipation I have. Also, since I really have to plan ahead of time when I'm playing for the week (so I can make sure Jason doesn't volunteer us for anything). I'm glad that the guild is going to be better... I just hope that I get to be a part of that.

ICC 25 for funsies

So... BoO went into ICC 25 for the... third? maybe time last night and for the first time (I think) actually killed stuff. Yay! Nothing prolonged this week, I just wanted to hop on, say stuff, then post pictures.

Orithea is a big girl and throws around big girl pally bubbles.



First Marrowgar kill! Boner spikes are bad. This only took like 5 attempts and we ended up 2 tanking it. Bad ass heals, if I do say so myself.



First Deathwhisper kill! We finished her off in the third attempt. Lots of fun, really. =] I called out mind controls during the fight.



First Gunship success! This is cake. If we didn't win on the first try, I probably would have lied and said we did, LOL.

Weekly Raid Report

I think I'm seriously about to change to Wordpress and just call my blog "Weekly Raid Report." That's all I do anymore. I'm okay with that... and if I can get into the habit of writing once a week, maybe eventually I can habitualize myself into writing more often. I'm just gonna keep going with this once a week thing for now, though. Last night... was an utter failure. This was our first ICC 25 since it first came out, and quite a few of us had upgrades, me included, but it just wasn't enough. To be honest, the majority of the blame for our 15 wipes can be placed on the pugs that we took with us or shitty RNG on boner spikes. Beyond that though, I had a smidgeon of fun. On the fail Tuesday raids, I very rarely get to raid with all of the major raiders of BoO... =] Ky was missing, but everyone else was more or less there, and I came to realize just how much I really enjoy my new WoW family. I'm still not around enough, but the idle thoughts I was having about xferring back to Kirin Tor are now long gone. I still don't want to level anything on Azgalor though. PVP realm... /shiver. All that being said... I do believe I'm going to change the name of my blog. In the event that that isn't possible (because it may not be), I'll be making a new blog. This just isn't a Casual Encounter anymore... It's not very much about me leveling alts or real life or other video games like I wanted it to be. It's me talking about my most recent raids with a smidgeon of character added in.

Goals for next week: Run a successful ICC OR run a successful Ulduar in which we keel Yoggy. Either of these would be fun, but we'll see what Amber has in store for me before I make up my mind =].

Sorry

I was mopey last week. I'm not sure why really, but I was mopey. This week's raid went a lot better... kinda. Not ICC. Nope, we didn't even get past Marrowgar (and the next wing is open now? =X) But, we tried twice and then, in a moment of clarity, I said. Well... If we're not even going to get past Marrowgar, and we're still looking for a DPS... why don't we go to ToC and do the weekly? Wouldn't that be a helluva lot more gains? I was right, of course. Not everyone in there needed something from ToC, but alot of us got some upgrades. I got rid of my ridiculous Naxx10 shoes. Now if someone would just take away that freaking offhand. Oh well. Overall though, I can't remember the last time I've had that much fun. Mostly because we kinda goofed off. Kyr probably could have one healed it, but I was there to tank heal while he was making sure the raid wasn't dead. We single tanked Anub... he didn't even get one submerge in. 2 min fight lulz. Needless to say, I think we full cleared the place (this included one wipe) in about 45 minutes. I repeat, I can't remember when I had that much fun on a raid. Maybe that's what I need to do? Organizing old raids for kicks and giggles and badges? The only problem with that is some people don't seem to want old raids. They want new raids with new gear. We'll see... An Ulduar run could be fun, maybe.

C'est La Vie

This isn't a rant per se. It's more like... me being all mopey because my limited play time is catching up with me. Not like I'm getting worse or anything. I don't think I am. But with the fact that ICC is a real raid, and not a thing you can simply hop in to and get loot, and the fact that I only do one day a week, is really starting to show, it seems. I just feel like I don't bring as much to the table as I could and that the other healers are supporting me. This is compounded by the fact that the only night I really can raid, starts an hour later than every other night, yet still ends at the same time. Not really anyone's fault, but the raids never start on time anyways, and Tues seems to be the alt run. This means... we down one boss and I have a 100 gold repair bill. Again. This is really just me being mopey and writing something down, that hardly anyone reads... except a few guildies, which brings me to my next mopey string of words.

I've been in the guild now for a few months, but I'm still not really making friends like I would have liked to. Maybe it's because a lot of them are already friends irl... I just feel like... I'm there for business and that's it. I want to be there for more than just heals. They could get pugs for that. I don't know... maybe it's just the "bad" run last night that has made me kinda down, but I just feel like it's not getting fun. Once again, though, all this stems from me only being able to raid once a week. It sucks, but c'est la vie.