Quick Thing

As cool as it was I got rid of the the Armory Musing's pop up for gear on blogs. I just wasn't using it often enough. So I guess y'all just need to click on links XD

Now to go back and fix some of my past posts. Oo

Peek a Boo

So this is a bit of a silly post, but I figured I'd take a look at some of the quirky priestly spells today. We get a few, starting with Mind Soothe, followed by Levitation and my favorite, Mind Vision.





Starting off with Mind Soothe:

In a nut shell, this is a nice spell if you need to scoot by some humanoids that you don't plan on clearing. (Or if you're trying to get at that herb/ore and really don't feel like fighting the mob patrolling near it.) If makes it so that ring of aggro the mob has centered on it is reduced by 10 yds, letting you get just a tad closer. It's got a level cap of 85, since there are still some ?? mobs even to 70s, though how many of them are not instances bosses, I don't know. They tend to be immune to stuff like this though, so it's kinda pointless to risk the aggro.
Oh yea, that's the draw back, the spell can fail, or be resisted. And then you get the fight you didn't want. Or an elite who's less than pleased with you if you're in an instance.
Quiet honestly, this is my least favorite of the three utility spells. I have yet to really find a good use for this spell. It's not on my bar any more, since I never use it. So yea, not a bad spell, there's no big bang to it.

On to Levitate!

Now here's a spell I use a lot and I have fun with it. ^.^
It's your Jesus spell! Walk on water! Accidentally dismounted way over Shattrath? Not a problem, just hit this spell, and you'll float back down to safety. It lasts a whole minute and a half longer than a mage's Soft Fall (which doesn't let you walk on water, I might add XD) but not as long as the shaman's water walk (10 mins). The only pain in the butt thing is you need to have a reagent for this spell. We get a grand total of three spells that need reagents. Our prayers of Fort and Spirit, and this one. It takes a Light feather for each cast, but that's not hard to get (specially if you're religiously running Setthek Halls Heroic daily, like I am.... ANZU's reins will be MINE!)

Ahem, right, anywho, this is a good OH SHIT I'M FALLING spell, as well as a cool way to get to Kara quicker ;) (I'll even post a video on that technique later.)
Other than that... it's just a cool novelty spell. Never had to use it for a fight since you fall to earth as soon as you get hit in combat, but none the less, very fun. Oh and as of last patch, instead of just looking like you're standing on an invisible ground, they added a nice little floaty look when you're just standing:

Nifty huh? ^.^

And last but most definately not least, Mind Vision!

This is SUCH a fun spell. Maybe I'm crazy, but I amused myself for hours outside of the Scryer bank, just randomly casting this spell. On alliance, on horde, doesn't matter. NO ONE'S SAFE! And hell, it's one hellava way to test drive that Netherdrake/Netherray mount you've been eying (or silently but forlornly pining for, since well, being holy, you won't get it quickly or easily /sigh)
But in a practical sense, I get a good bit of use out of this spell in Karazhan. Our Raid Leader hates marking the Shade Trash between the Curator's to Aran's room, because they stealth in and out of view, so he might prematurely pull them because he can't see them. So what I do is Mind Vision him, then once he's got something targeted, hit my assist key (in this case, the default 'F' key) and target the shade, then recast Mind Vision. Voila! I can now mark them at my leisure. The shade I'm using as my eyes can't stealth while I'm on it, so I can recast the spell in case it takes more than a minute to mark (which is shouldn't).
Also, this spell can be resisted, so just be prepared. Since we holy PvE'rs don't really need to concentrate on spell hit, it will probably come up... but I'm not going to say "ZOMG get new gear"... for this... one... spell.
Yea.
But anywho! I love this spell. So fun. You can use it in many different situations just to get your target early. I have yet to test it on a rogue in PvP though, but then again, I really don't want to be a sitting duck for said rogue.... more to come on this though!

Edit: As Kirk oh so graciously reminded me, this spell does not cause NPC aggro. However, player aggro is very situational ^.^


So, if you're bored, Mind Vision yourself a Hordie today. Drives their addon's mad! :)

All in all, not a bad spread of utility spells, though I could always wish for something more. Like a holy one that lets you put the fear of the Light into your foes! It would look pretty, make stealth not possible... in a 5 yd area. Like an Elune stone of Justice!

Come on, it could happen ^.^

~Cay

Fun Stuff

Hello again boys and goyles! It's been a fun week for teh Squeekie ^.^

AC's group 2 took out Nightbane on Monday (yay!) while, as Brig and Tred have ranted about, group 1 got cock blocked at Prince.

But we both got past Aran, and there's another 2 groups scheduled this week! Wewt! We're 12 out of 13! (Oh group 2 got the Oz event for the first time too!)

"Great, now where's mah damn video?!" you ask. Hold yer damn horsies ;P

Nightbane - Younoob link or Download the actual Vid (for those of you at work)

Oz - Younoob linkage or Download the vid!

I will say this, the quality is much better if you DL the vid instead of youtube. I can't get youtube to keep most of the quality so it gets really grainy. But I'm still using Window Movie Maker. Premier.... is very confusing.

And now.... On with todays actual post!

Hrm... I have some other things to catch up on, eh?

As Ego so awesomely suggested, I've put my "Healing Karazhan" posts in a easy to find place link type box. However, it pointed out to me... that I'm missing bosses!

I haven't done Curator, Big Bad Wolf or Romulo and Julianne. I am ashamed. -.-

However! This means more yummy postage. Also! I've been busy with Rakzha lately, and I have some thoughts on leveling shadow to post soon. Because honestly... leveling Holy is ASKING FOR IT. Don't get me wrong, I <3 being your face mender, it's my calling, but there are two sides to the coin, and getting to the mending takes smelting some faces.

In other news, and semi petty rantish, so you can ignore it... but this just ticks me off. I orginally rolled Dwarf because it was the only race that had fear ward available.

Lo and behold, the xpac comes out, and BAM! Draenei get it. Ug. Well, Cay was already uber, I'm not going to start a brand new toon to level to 70 just because I like the look (even though that Symbol of Hope is pretty tempting...) but anyway... I could have had a pretty, schmexy looking priest, instead of stately. WTH. Now EVERYONE is going to get Fear ward? /head desk

And before any Hordies get their knickers in a twist, Shammy's have had Tremor totem since level... what, 8? It effects the whole party. Fear Ward has a 30 second cool down, so usually, only the tank got it. I know that's how we roll on Dragons.

So yea... ug. I know, the rumor is it won't be out for sometime, I have plenty of time to rebuild a schmexy priesty from the ground up... but still...

Ug.


~rant off

TGIF people!

And Aran, Aran So Far Away...

So, twice I've seen this guy kiss dirt. Both times was a nightmare! But if you want heart pumping, edge of your seat excitement.... yea, this fight will give you this.

The Shade of Aran is a fun fight. He's a whore, he has NO aggro list, so heal to your hearts content, but be careful. He loves to target people with low HP so he can finish them off with his Arcane Missiles of DEATH or Fireball of FOOSH. He also has three special abilities:



Blizzard - covers half the room, slows people down and damages them (ranged only really)
Arcane Explosion - he pulls the entire raid into the middle of the room, casts SLOW, then has 10secs of casting of an Explosion that does about 10K on plate... so yea, RUN.
Flame Wreath - DON'T MOVE! I'M SERIOUS! This is cast around three people in the raid, if they or anyone in the raid even TURNS SIDEWAYS... then the entire raid gets hit for about 4K worth of fire damage.

So yea, three different schools of magic. During the entire fight, he's casting something from each: Fireball, Frost Bolt, or Arcane Missiles. You have your raid interrupting 2 out of the three schools so he doesn't run out of mana too quickly... because... if he does... (this is funny) he Mass Polymorphs your raid, creates some water and sits to have a drink, getting his mana back up to full. Then, after he's had a nice cool refreshing mana drink, he does a PYROBLAST VOLLEY to the entire raid. It hits me for about 7K, and I usually die. Also, as if this guy didn't have enough annoying abilities, at 40% health, he summons 4 water elementals. They last for 90seconds or until your raid can kill them and not die while Aran is merrily casting away on anyone who strikes his fancy.

The Strat:

THIS IS A HEALING NIGHTMARE! But it's fun too.

This fight tests how on your toes you can be. Your normal routine of Frisbee, Renew, GHeal, lather rinse repeat on your MT is thrown right out the window, into the pool, to stew for a little bit.

Instead, you're healing anyone who needs it. This could be the other healer, the DPS, yourself, ANYONE. Renew helps, but if you need that Oh Sh!t heal, go with a shield on your target and be ready. If you have a pally backing you up in this fight, awesome. Also!

(I need to switch PCs.... so yea, I will finish this soon!)

Ahhh! Posting while at work! Anyway! Also! Aran's has about a 10 yard Counterspell Aura around him, so you don't want to be standing near him (if you noticed in the video... I was standing in the CS aura... bad Stephi. But I lucked out because I was casting in the middle of his cool down for it... Yes for living dangerously!)

Also, you'll notice in the video too, if your interrupters for the fight happen to miss a beat and block all three of his schools... he starts running around punching people. This is bad! When he's in the center of the room, you can pretty much gage where his CS aura is. When he's running around batshit crazy, not so easy to tell where the aura is.

Depending on your DPS, and how well your raid has done the interrupts, either Aran runs down to 20% mana (Polymorph time) or 40% health (Elementals). Hopefully not both at the same time. If so, you may want to tell your DPS to hold up, so that the polymorph comes, you get a little time to recover and then you can deal with the elementals.

During the elemental stage, your MT and OT will be tanking elementals while the raid burns them down. Here you can sorta get back into your normal swing of things, just be aware of what major spell is coming (hopefully not Flame Wreath since those stupid elementals do ranged T.T) and also I hope you have a warlock in your raid. There are 4 elementals, so the lock can Fear one and Banish another, while your raid takes out the other two.

There is very little time in this fight to chat with the 5sec rule... which makes me a sad panda, but my best advice here is pot often, and pot EARLY. And most of all... have fun! Cross your fingers for the Boots of the Incorrupt, Aran's Soothing Sapphire to replace your Signet of Unshakable Faith from Moroes, or Formula: Enchant Weapon - Sunfire if you're an enchanter ^.^ (which Doom, the sweetie, let me take on our last run!)

Toodles for now!

~Cay

Catching Up

More like there was this virus right... and I couldn't eat anything without getting violently ill.

So suffice to say, playing WoW or writing on it was cut short. It was teh suck.

However! I have some fun news: on Monday, AC took out Prince! For Youtube video goodness, I direct you to this link here. For those of you with the IT Nazi regime at work, you can DL the video here (though the DL is much clearer ^.^).

It was much fun, but my guts didn't like my excited celebration as Prince kissed dirt, so Monday was cut pretty short for me.

We got Aran the night before again, so that was a good boost, and though we lost some guildies because of schedules, we've got out DCoE back and 2 groups ready to go this week! ^.^

We also tried Nightbane for the first time on Sunday... we're thinking we'll need 3 healers for it. ZOMG he hits so hard! And our poor mage just couldn't survive the aerial attack at 75%.


So! With all that out of the way, time for this week's post! I've been wanting to spew about the Aran fight, the Prince fight and Heroic Shattered Halls ^.^

Please, don't kills me

I've been sick, and couldn't really post much. However, tonight and tomorrow, I will have things to splurge about!


Very sorry for the huge post gap guys.

And now back to your regular bloggin...

Post Delayed

Yea guys, sorry about yesterdays absent post. I'm running a bit behind.

T.T

Don't kills me. XD

Another One Bites the Dust

That's right, AC downed Aran last night, for the first time! And we one shotted him too! Thank you Doom for your awesome prediction!


Oh, and now, for your viewing pleasure, the vid I stayed up till 4AM making XD

YouTube link

and for those at work and YouTube is blocked:

The Vid from Silentstephi.com

Its about 50MB, so it might take a smidge long ^.^

Enjoy!

/dance

And because I like pretty things...

This is such a nice quest.

I did this quest with my Squishi, BE hunter. I love it when Blizz tosses us an atmosphere cookie. Wish there were more.

And I'm also a sucker for gorgeous sopranos.


PS: If anyone can clue by 4 me in to posting a video to the blog, that would be great, but when I tried the embed code form Youtube, I got a big angry screen that said REQUEST DENIED... -.-

The Few, the Proud, the Bloggers

So I added some more fun blogs to my "Interesting Places to Go".

It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to view a blog I had never seen before and see that I was linked on it ^.^

Priestly Endeavors is an awesome place to read about lots of things priesty. Lots of Shadow Priest stuff there too. I'll be definitely going over some of that stuff while I level Cai/Rakzha.

A View From Behind is Doom's blog and WOOT! Someone I can geek out with on the Awesomeness that is the Mutilate/Combat spec. /dance

Then there's The Positive Warrior , Brig's blog and always a fun read. I like to know what my meatshield is thinking... never tick off your meatshield, for you are squishi and feint at the thought of pokies coming your way.

And finally, there's TJ, who is just fun to read, as she likes to poke the Kitty. ^.^

That's it for today. This silly New England weather has deemed I need a summer cold, so now the screen's getting all fuzzy. T.T

Terestian Illhoof : Feral Druids Wetdream

It's been a week or two, but this fight was an interesting one. Illhoof is an optional boss in Karazhan. He's behind the "Conspicuous Bookcase" right outside the Shade of Aran's room, and, really, unless you have a warlock in your party, just skip him.
(Your ferals will probably whimper though, since they really want Terestrian's Stranglestaff.)

Here's the group layout we had to take him down, and I'll tell ya, healing during this mofo .... ZOMG. We had our tanks (Prot Warrior and Feral), a DCoE Shammy and myself healing, and our DPS was 2 Boomkin, 1 Rogue, 1 Kitty, and 2 Locks.

Illhoof isn't alone by the way. He's got a little imp pet that he keeps around, and needs to be tanked. The bonus to the little guy is, if you kill him, Illhoof suffers from a "Broken Pact" debuff, and is taking 20% more dmg for 30secs. The suck thing is, his little buddy comes running back from the Void once the 30 secs is up. Little shithead won't stay DEAD! -.- Illhoof also likes to portal in cubic butt tons of mini imps, and while they're easier to kill, there's so many! They can put a Debuff on you that's non dispel-able that makes you take tons more dmg from fire spells too. And as always WoW Wiki has an awesome break down of his fight.


The Strat:

You need to split your healing job practically 4 ways in this fight. First, the lock(s) will be "tanking" all the little bitches. If you only have one lock, well, all the power to him/her. This is a tough job. The lock is going to be tossing a Seed of Corruption up on Illhoof, and then doing their cute little lock AoE to kill the buggers.

You have 4 different heals going on. You have your lock(s), your MT, your OT, and then the Sacrifice (more on that in a sec).

Assign one healer to your MT/OT and the other to the lock. Who ever has lock duty should also take care of the Sacrifice. The MT/OT are really not taking the brunt of the damage in this fight. Illhoof doesn't hit that hard and his little guy is laughable. You can leave a renew on the OT and forget about him. Healing your usual suspects in this fight is a cake walk compared to the rest.

If you get Lock/Sacrifice duty, you're in for a much more intense experience. Once the little imp invasion starts, your lock is going to need your tender lovin' heals. Btw, that Fel Armor? /molest
It increasing the amount of healing you do to them, so that makes things slightly nicer. Tossing a PWS on them is not a frownable act in my opinion too, if they're cutting it close.

Now, to the Sacrifice. I don't care if you're .1 second from finishing that heal on your other target, STOP whatever you're doing and start with a FHeal on the Sacrificed victim. It took us 4 tries to kill Illhoof because the first two times, I didn't stop my healing ASAP to start healing the Sacrifice. Here's what happens: Illhoof nabs one of your raid, and puts them in the oggy circle in the middle, killing 1.5K HP per second. This drain also heals him of stupid amounts of HP, so not only do you need to keep that person alive to get rid of what he just healed, your raid needs to be prepared to take down the chains holding the sacrifice. Because those chains can be killed, and your friend free'd to pwn some more Illhoof face.

Did I mention Tab Targeting the Demon Chains holding your raidmate is retardedly impossible because of all the farking imps? Yea, so make sure your DPS has a macro that targets those chains AS SOON as they're up.


This fight is VERY mana intensive, on all sides. You will have little to no time for your loveable 5SR. I know, it'll be mad that you didn't call, and probably pissed that you prank call it a few times in the fight, but those times are few and far between. Even with two locks, bring lots of mana pots to this fight. Your fiend will do best on Illhoof, but if you don't have time to click him, don't worry, just tab target something and let your cutie eat an imp or two (spam the Pet Attack button if it's eating imps, you don't want him sitting with a thumb up his butt when you need MANA damn it!)

Otherwise, enjoy the fight guys! It's crazy fun and you have the Cincture of Will/Mender's Heart Ring to secretly lust for while your Ferals cry that the staff is a no show ;)

Some Thoughts on Guild and Karazhan

Warning: The following is my obligatory worry post. Feel free to ignore it as it really doesn't have much in detail on what to do when healing Kara or healing in general. However, it is an excellent post on how to worry yourself into early ulcers.

You have been warned. :P



So, it happened. On Wednesday, AC fielded 2 whole Kara groups. We started raiding on June 5th. August 1st, 2 groups.

Group 2's Raid Leader was late, then it turned into no show. Damn Real Estate agents. But with some shuffling, two people who previously didn't think they could make it did and Group 2 was able to roll on through a half an hour late. Group 1 cleared through Opera (BBW), Group 2 had to stop after Moroes since the healer had an OH SH!T IRL emergency. But they were back yesterday to finish off Maiden and Opera (BBW) while we had to nab two extras for Group 1 to get through Curator/Chess and get eaten by Aran (he's such a bitch, more on him later).

On the one hand, I'm excited, thrilled, ecstatic that we can field two groups into Kara. But the other hand is terrified of all the headache that comes with it. We're just barely sqeaking out those two groups. We have the tanks, between our Prot warriors/feral druids/Prot pally, but we're just barely getting by with healers. There's 4 exactly, with a possible 5th (he's 70, and he's 2 PMC's from his set, just need his last two frags and BM) but he's got a really tight schedule, so I'm not sure when he'll ever be able to start raiding.
Plus the DCoE is one of those 4 Healz of Awesome on her Shammy of Doom and as ecstatic as I am that I'm raiding with her, we need more healers so she can play her Face Melter. The Shammy is awesome, but she is the DCoE for a reason ;)

Kara is my first raid experience. Fio and I are brandy spankin' new to this whole raid world. I don't want to get people upset or pissed that they didn't get a chance to go raiding this week for this or that reason, but that's why we're trying the two groups. The big disadvantage to that is trying to sync schedules.

We're not hard core, we're casual. So we're not raiding 5 or 6 nights a week. More like 2 to 4. And we've got multiple time frames to deal with. I know, probably every raiding guild has to go through the same schtuff.

So how do they deal with it? How do other casual guilds deal with raiding so that they don't have officers who's heads about to implode because they're worried they're going to leave someone out and then that person is going to make a stink and be unpleasant and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH?!

So yea. Those are the thoughts for today. Tune in later for my tips on healing Illhoof: Rat Bastard, but a Lock's Bitch.

Sex = Good Start to Day

Got your attention? Good.

Today friends, we take a look at my favorite spell since 68.

Prayer of Mending, also know as the "Frisbee" (Thank you Ego).

Let me start off by saying I actually didn't start using the Frisbee right away.
It was new, it was weird, and I was still a nooblet using Flash Heal, so I couldn't appreciate the awesome power that is the Frisbee.

Let's take a look at the tool tip:

Places a spell on the target that heals them for 800 the next time they take damage. When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a raid member within 20 yards. Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump.

See that? Raid member. Yummy.

A few cool, nifty things about the Frisbee:

- It's low mana cost with high healing return value
- Nice way to manage AOE dmg on melee
- Whoever is healed by the Frisbee, gets the aggro. That's right, you gain no healing aggro.
- It can last up to 2.5 mins, bonus!

Cons:
-You have no control where it goes

I think 4 : 1 is a good ratio, don't you?

But after running many a 70 instance and the occasional Heroic, I can say that the Frisbee is an essential spell to have.

You're first spell every time should be to toss that Frisbee to the tank, right before he pulls. The first hit he takes, oh look, it's gone AND he's got healing aggro. Not you, the tank. A nice little aggro boost. It's great that you can help get the mobs pissed off at your meat shield and not your squishi self.

Most likely, after your tank has gotten his 1st hit, the Frisbee will either jump to a random person, OR, it jumps to the next person with the lesser % health. This can be a bonus or an annoyance. If your 'Lock is killing them selves for mana again, and you have no other melee up in the mobs face, the Frisbee likes to give said Lock some love. But Lock's sucking the life out of themselves for mana doesn't proc it's healing ability, so blarg.

This is why having something like MendWatch or Natur EnemyCastBar is essential. You need to know where the Frisbee went. If it's just sitting there chillin' out on the ranged caster who's doing good and NOT getting any aggro, then you'll want to recast it on the tank to give him/her some more aggro/healin' love.

Oh and nifty trick I saw a Shadow Priest do once: If you have Frisbee and Fade's up, toss a quick Shadow Word: DEATH onto the mob. The Frisbee will heal you of that, and if you have a good tank, then you're little DPS heal shouldn't cause too much of a tiff.

EDIT: Thank you Malva, it's good to know that the Fribee does not in fact stack when you have two holys playing with the group.

A note on how much it heals: The tip says base of 800. At a +healing of around 1700, my Frisbee smacks some one for a little over 1600. That's at most 8000 Healing for 390 mana... YES PLEASE! Math people, you do the math on this one.

And that my friends, is the Frisbee. Learn it. Love it. Have fun with it.

But most of all... PLAY IT!

Oh and just because I thought it was funny, the frisbee in the picture above come from here...



This guy has ALIEN NIPPLES! ZOMG!