Tobold's Blog
Monday, March 31, 2008
 
WoW Journal - 31-March-2008

Before talking about my adventures in World of Warcraft this weekend, I'd like to say grats to my wife: Mrs. Tobold dinged 70 for the first time, also the first time she hit the level cap in three years of playing WoW. She has about a dozen characters, but most of them were given up a few levels before the cap. But then she discovered stealth, and first leveled up a rogue to 68, and now finally a druid to 70. Too bad she's running out of stealth classes now. As she neither groups nor does PvP, it isn't clear what she'll do next.

Me, I'm still playing three characters. Although I must say I'm playing my warrior less and less. At least I managed to get him up to another 9k honor, so he could buy the off-hand epic sword. As my tanking career is less than satisfying, and the welfare blues provide a good start for a dps gear set, I might respec to dual-wielding dps fury and see if that is more fun. Or I'll park him in a cupboard and only let him out when I need potions made.

My mage is coming along nicely, now level 67. I'm at the last quests in Nagrand, and plan to go from there directly to Netherstorm, because I haven't really quested all that much in that zone. This weekend I found a group with guild mates and a stranger to do a whole bunch of group quests in Nagrand. The demon quest series, the end of the Nessingwary hunting quests, everything except Durn the Hungerer, because we didn't have a full group. Doesn't matter, that quest doesn't have good mage loot anyway. I had great fun with AoE in Sunspring Village with the murkbloods, and just have to finish the Warmaul ogres before moving on.

The character I spent the most time on this weekend was my priest. I did every available Sunwell Offensive daily quest with him every day, plus several Magister's Terrace (MrT) runs. The funniest run was a heroic MrT run with a tank, two mages, and a hunter, all very well equipped, and playing well. With lots of crowd control even heroic is relatively easy, and we got to Kael'thas without many problems. But in heroic Kael'thas occasionally puts up a 10k health shield, and starts casting pyroblast for 50k damage. You need to take down the shield and interrupt the spell, which seems pretty much impossible. So you just have to wipe a couple of times until you get lucky and manage to get to phase 2 without him having launched a pyroblast. So we did that, Kael tosses us around with gravity lapses a couple of times, I desperately try to keep myself and everyone alive with prayers of mending and renews, until I find that everyone but me suddenly is dead. I target Kael, and find him at 1% life. So I cast a shadow word: pain and a disease on him, start blasting him with a wand, and somehow manage to kill him. ROFL, holy priest soloes Kael'thas on heroic!

If you have a good group, heroic MrT is nice, because it gives you 5 epics and 4 badges of justice. I had the impression that the loot table for MrT has an above average amount of weapons on it, heroic Kael'thas dropped two epic weapons for us, for example. My priest got an interesting epic trinket from the third boss, which gets one charge every time I cast any healing spell, up to a maximum of 20, and I can discharge it instantly and heal a target for 100 health per charge. An instant 2000 point heal can be rather useful, and you can charge the trinket before combat by spamming cheap renews.

With all this activity my priest is half way through honored, just 6k more reputation until revered, where I can get the jewelcrafting recipes I want. I think I overestimated the effort needed, I'll have the jewelcrafting recipes for epic gems long before the server reaches phase 3 and I can actually buy the uncut epic gems for badges. Not that it was a waste of time to do all those daily quests, they padded my wallet quite nicely. But I'm wondering if maybe I should stop with my priest at revered, and either do the dailies then with my warrior, or level up my mage and do them with him. Right now I don't see the use of getting my priest to exalted, while the warrior or mage could get some nice gear for reputation.

The last thing to report is a raid to Serpentshrine Cavern, where we killed the Lurker, and tried our hand at Leotheras the Blind. That was fun, and interesting to see for the first time for me, even if ultimately we didn't kill him. What was somewhat less fun was an episode where my guild wanted to start another SSC run, I didn't feel like going there, and their raid didn't get off the ground due to lack of healers. Talk about peer pressure. I sometimes get the impression that some raid healers go deliberately into hiding, log off, and don't even play alts around the time raids are formed, to avoid being pestered into raids they don't want to go to. Is it just me or are raid healers burning out faster than other raiders?
Comments:
One reason for raid healer burnout might be that whatever mistakes others make, it's always you who have to work harder to compensate. One other reason might be that since you're not directly fighting the boss, you might feel more like a cheerleader than a player. I've gotten my share of playing whack-a-mole with Kalecgos, whose curses cannot really be decursed, just bounced off to a different target.
 
Grats to Mrs. Tobold on making it to the cap! Has she tried grouping and just found it wasn't her thing?

I also support the abbreviation of Magister's Terrance as MrT. Everywhere else refers to it as MgT and I keep getting confused with Magic: The Gathering.
 
"I also support the abbreviation of Magister's Terrance as MrT."

Hello, I am Magister Terrace and I am a night elf punk.
 
First: gratz to Mrs Tobold.
Second: She doesn't group? Not even with you?

So if she anyway plays solo, I am sure she can find more than enough games with stealth where she doesn't have a character yet.
 
Gratz to Mrs Tobold!

Worthy news in its own right :)
 
Yes, I regularly don't login at group forming and even tried leveling a guildless Alt to not be asked to heal. I enjoy healing a lot, but I don't like being asked constantly and explaining why I'm not healing this time (and actually do some BG's, AH or solo stuff I enjoy).
 
Grats to Mrs. Tobold!

I wonder if Death Knights will be able to stealth... :)
 
Regarding Kaels Pyro: As far as I know, there is only a small timeframe where he actually casts this. It might be from 55 to 50% of his HP, but don't quote me, I'm just a healer ;)
The trick is simply to hold back a bit until the 55%, then everyone blow out cooldowns and try to reach 50% asap.
 
Honestly, I didn't even know Kael did pyroblast in this version. Unfortunately, the groups I've been with have outgeared that instance pretty handily and the whole instance amounts to a zerg. I enjoy seeing the new Sunwell Plateau fights, but Magister's Terrace is fun for being fast but not so much for strategy.
 
Congrats to your wife! Tell her Great Job!
 
"What was somewhat less fun was an episode where my guild wanted to start another SSC run, I didn't feel like going there, and their raid didn't get off the ground due to lack of healers. Talk about peer pressure. I sometimes get the impression that some raid healers go deliberately into hiding, log off, and don't even play alts around the time raids are formed, to avoid being pestered into raids they don't want to go to. Is it just me or are raid healers burning out faster than other raiders?"

Even the most considerate, well-meaning raid leader will still gently prod a healer to go just a bit longer or whisper to come on an off-night. It's understandable, because their job is to see the raid do content.

And I could, and did, say no. But the pressure was still there. They are your friends and guild and you want to see them progress.

In the end I started playing on an unguilded alt.
 
yep. I usually play healers and when I was in a raiding guild if I didn't have time or just didn't want to raid. I just didn't play.

I don't think people realize the cumulative pressure they put on the healers in raiding guilds. It's not that one guy that pushes hard. Him I just ignore. its the 15 people who whisper you everytime you log on and beg you to keep thier group from falling apart. But when you need a group you get answers like. Well your a healer you can get group you dont need me. That just adds pressure from the other side. And after awhile they just burn out.
 
Tanti auguri a signora Tobold :)
 
Unfortunately, same thing applies to tanks, not only healers :(
Gurtogg Bloodboil needs to be tanked by 3 tanks (he is not on farm for us yet, only 2 hard kills), and raid were not started until I showed up and were convinced to tank him.
 
To add to your wonderful "Holy Priest Solo's Kael" story...

We had a guild run on H MrT (I was not in, btw, but listening in Vent) going. Coming along nicely, as they all tend to do. Kael gets to the 50% mess and... BOOM... everyone dead but the Holy Priest doing gravity lapses.

What happend next will be guild legend forever... err, a long time.

Our Holy Priest, using essentially Rejuv and SW:P, over the course of 5 to 7 minutes, solo'd Kael from 50% to Loot.

The dead members were calling out every 5% in guild chat, and the last 5% every 1. The entire guild erupted to cheers when the Mad Elf went down.

Alas, no SS or video to prove it. Just the word of an awed guild mate.

So... congrats to Chivalrys from Black Undertide on Uldum for an incredible. May you get the admiration you deserve!
 
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