Free Candy For Everyone
There is no candy here. It’s just thoughts on video games, tech gadgets, movies and whatever else inspires me. Which is almost like candy. But not really at all.
Blood Wing cleared
Jan 25th
It wasn’t pretty but we got past the Blood Prince Council and Blood Queen tonight. Super stoked, the fights were challenging and interesting for the healers for a change! Most of Icecrown Citadel has been pretty mindless and putting me to sleep.
Now to convince the bosses to drop some caster mail…
P.S. Blizzard, please fix the bug where the AOE damage that the Blood Queen does triggers shaman water shield orbs. Having to refresh my water shield every 15 seconds is a poor use of GCD.
How to Resto
Jan 20th
My guild is working its way through Icecrown Citadel on 25m and 10m and I recently posted some tips on resto shaman healing to our guild forum. I thought I’d copy them here in case anyone else was interested.
We use World of Logs to study how we’re doing and compare our progress across weeks. I recently took a look at our healers and came up with some notes about what I consider when healing.
Here’s the log from Lady Deathwhisperer from last night (of course I chose this fight because I was the top healer, mwhaha).
1) Keep Earth Shield up!
Keep ES up all the time! Unless it’s a single tank fight and Myr is hogging all the ES glory (I’m Myr, and in your case I mean another resto shaman since I’m probably not secretly raiding with you), make sure you have ES on a tank. LDW is a good example where there are tanks on both sides. Make sure to be refreshing ES in downtimes, if it’s at 1 or 2 orbs left I tend to refresh it if I’m not doing anything else.
2) Keep Water Shield up!
If you are running low on mana you should spend a GCD refreshing your water shield if it’s down (or about to go down). In a hectic fight this might seem dangerous but having no mana is worse!
3) Riptide is awesome and should be used whenever it’s off cooldown
Even without the t10 set bonus (which gives you spell haste after riptide), Riptide procs Tidal Waves which makes your Lesser Healing Wave crit chance increase and your reg Healing Wave cast time decrease. Plus it’s an instant heal with a hot. If you’re tank healing you should be doing Riptide->LHW->LHW or HW if you have the time. On Festergut at 3 stacks I’m doing Riptide->HW->LHW and repeat on the main tank.
4) Chain Heal is pretty awesome
For a while it sucked. But they buffed how much each bounce hits for and how far it’ll jump. If it’s a stacked tank fight then I’m pretty much always chain healing the tanks (Marrowgar is a great example of this). On Saurfang I’m chain healing the tanks as well since they end up switching off and tend to both be taking dmg. When choosing between CH and LHW on the tanks I choose LHW if time is of the essence and they are really low, otherwise I usually CH if I think it’ll hop to at least one other player. Same with healing non-tanks. I always riptide the lowest raid member and will LHW if someone is really critically low, otherwise it’s usually chain heal.
5) Don’t forget your cooldowns
Nature’s Swiftness is now on a 2 min cooldown. I use it early and often in boss fights and trash. Insta-cast HW on the tank in a pinch or for a CH if the raid is taking crazy damage.
Tidal Force can be a savior too! It makes you crit which not only saves whoever you are healing but procs Ancestral Awakening and heals the lowest member of the raid too. If NS is on CD and we’re in an Oh Shit raid damage moment I hit Tidal Force.
Shaman don’t have nearly as many healing spells to figure out as priests (I know, I have one of those too). The crux of being a great shaman healer is figuring out when to use each tool and in what order since we’re so much about procs. Spamming anything mindlessly is rarely the best thing to do, for each fight we should evaluate what kind of damage players will be taking and choose the best tools to fit that situation! If anyone has questions on a particular fight, I’m happy to share my healing strats for it. Enjoy!
NaNoWriMo report
Dec 14th
It’s December and I’m sure the question on your mind is “Did you finish your novel for NaNoWriMo?” Sadly, the answer is no. I managed to write 31,233 words in November which is amazing considering I hadn’t done any creative writing probably since college. But I didn’t make it to the “winner” status, which required 50,000 words. Just trying was an invaluable experience, however. I learned a lot!
Writing really gets easier with practice
At the start of the month it was really hard to write my daily quota. Sitting down without a clear idea what to write was scary and intimidating. The page was blank and the thought that I could fill it with something was just immensely difficult. But by the second and third week I knew I’d get some words down, regardless of if they were amazing or not. Even when I didn’t feel like writing, I’d manage to make progress.
Writing without being self critical is essential
I’m usually an excessively meticulous fiction writer. Every word and turn of phrase is examined and studied from every angle to determine if there’s a better word choice or way to communicate the sentiment at hand. This is funny since when I write blog posts I just ramble at will and it probably comes out better than when I fret about every single detail. When you’re trying to write thousands of words a day, you can’t be worrying about each individual word. As much as it made me wring my hands, I didn’t let myself turn back and edit anything. If I used the same word five times in a single paragraph then too bad! I could break out the thesaurus on the rewrite phase, if I ever got to it.
Setting a daily goal the requires writing every day is not realistic
If you write everyday, you need to write 1667 words per day to reach the NaNoWriMo winner’s circle. I gave myself the smallest possible margin, setting my daily goal at 1700 words. Then I had a few weekends where fun social plans kept me from writing and I fell so far behind. I think setting my daily goal at 2000 or even higher would have been better, allowing me to miss more days and not requiring catchup days with such high word goals. Looking at the remaining week and realizing I need to write almost 4000 words every day just deflated me.
Pre-plotting is good!
I did some basic world building before I started writing, getting a sketch of the characters and setting of my story. I had a loose idea of a character arc but I didn’t really have a plot, and ultimately it made it hard to progress. I had a lot of fun with unexpected new characters popping up and turning the story in different directions but if I’d had a firm central plot to pull things back to I might have made it through. As it was, my story delved into chaos and I wasn’t quite sure how to get out. My main character ended up in a dark place and the central arc of my story get left by the wayside. I think even having a one paragraph plot outline would have made things better.
Bottom line, it was great. I wrote and wrote and realized that I can write. Maybe not well, and maybe I’m not going to ever let anyone read anything in this first attempt at a novel, but I’m going to do it again. And I’m going to “win.”
November is for novels
Oct 25th
It’s official, I’m writing a novel in November. For years I’ve been reading about NaNoWriMo and wanting to give it a try, but November is usually a super busy time of the year for me. This year I had a game come out before the holiday season which means I actually have some time on my hands!
NaNoWriMo is a pledge to write a 50,000 word novel (or novella really) in the month of November. You can’t start writing ahead of time and it’s pencils down by the end of the month. The novel doesn’t need to be edited or polished, the point is just to get yourself to write.
How many people have “write a novel” on their to-do list? I know I do. It’s something I’ve always thought about for later. I love reading and used to be very creative. Growing up I would write stories all the time. Somewhere along the way everything got a little too serious and I haven’t made the time for it anymore. So quite probably my book will not be any good, but that’s not really the point. I want to reconnect to my creativity and do something that is far-fetched and a dream. So here goes, wish me luck.
And now with no wipes
Sep 24th
Cleared 10m Trial of the Grand Crusader tonight with NO WIPES. Got some nifty achievements and loot and a lot of excitement!
YouTube video of Anub kill shot! No music or titles this time, I’m tired 
Recent Comments