Thursday, February 17, 2011

Trinkets, regen, specs, oh my!

Lots of things have changed in the last week and a half since my last big post. I've acquired the Darkmoon Card: Tsunami, subsequently stopped using it (I feel like it'll be more useful in heroic fights), changed spec and healing style three and two times, respectively, gone from feeling like I have no mana to feeling like I have almost too much (hence the trinket switch), and heard that druids and shaman are likely to get their very own healing cooldown! It's been a busy, busy time.

I almost wish I'd sold the Darkmoon Card. Almost. When I did my mana experiment last Tuesday after the new mechanic and spec changes, I ran with this spec. It was pretty painful, to say the least. Keeping up at least three Rejuvs in order to supplement my faster Nourishes drained my mana faaaaast. So after the raid I took a trip to Shattrath, watched a quick Tauren Chieftans concert (I'm a complete fangirl :P) and came back with a shiny new card to show for it. But really, it didn't help all that much.

Wednesday I changed my spec, opting out of Efflorescence entirely. The mana situation didn't feel any better. If anything, it felt worse because I wasn't contributing as much AoE healing to the raid. But I've been in bad mana situations before. Gear fixes many things and I figured I would get used to it in time.

Then I went on vacation and wasn't in the raid Friday. The guild downed Cho'gall, woot! Disc was broken (and has since been fixed), but the fight came together well enough. We downed him again this week, a one-shot. I'm proud of us :). But while I was on vacation, I read a lot of blog posts. When you don't have WoW to crowd the downtime, it's amazing how much you can read! Anyway, I found Beru's post over at Falling Leaves and Wings about her experiences removing Efflorescence from her spec and why she's opting out of Nature's Bounty instead. She has a lot of numbers to back up her findings (I really should use World of Logs, just for my own knowledge, put that on the to-do list :P), but the gist of it was this:

Ok, I hear what you are thinking now “but all of those encounters have SO much raid damage that efflorescence really shines”. I agree! So I thought “ok, let me find an encounter without a lot of raid damage”. And you know what? THEY DON’T EXIST!

And thinking back on the fights, I tend to agree. So I removed Nature's Bounty, took back Efflorescence, and added Furor to my build (I'd been pretty much ignoring it before). And now my mana problems are non-existent. My second spirit trinket is now benched in favor of my Vibrant Alchemist Stone, which provides throughput AND a bit of a mana buff for when I use my potions. With the new spec, I'm having no more mana problems. Yay :).

Healing Cooldown!

Let's get ready to cooldown! Hmmm, sounded more epic in my head.

Anyway, a delicious post from blue Nethaera gives druids and shaman hope that we'll get a healing cooldown similar to Guardian Spirit or Hand of Sacrifice in the near future. Or at least it shows that the devs are thinking about it.

There's been a lot of cool ideas thrown around about what that cooldown might be. One of them I see a lot is Barkskin castable on others. I was thinking that was a cool idea, too, then something I read on Restokin got me thinking: Barkskin cast on others is just asking of a PvP-based nerf. The cooldown on your personal Barkskin would definitely be tied to the healing cooldown, which sucks on fights where big damage comes down on everyone (hello Nefarian!) and fights where the tank isn't the only one being beaten on (Maloriak comes to mind).

Jar's ideas over at Rank 4 Healing Touch got me thinking, though, that Nature's Swiftness isn't really a great talent anymore. It doesn't give tanks much health back with our huge health pools and even DPS aren't healed to full health with it (13% for DPS and 20% for tanks, he writes), so really it's a nice way to play catch-up when tank healing, but that's about it. And when we only get 41 talent points, having one point that does so little to actively affect your healing isn't that great. Augmenting Nature's Swiftness to make it more fun and interesting would certainly be cool. But what if we dropped the talent all together?

If there was a hole in the talent tree where NS used to be, that would make room for the healing cooldown talent we'd all like. A targeted version of Barkskin or an augment to Thorns (wouldn't that be interesting!)

Actually, if you can hang with me while I go stream-of-consciousness, a talent that made Thorns into a healing cooldown would be really cool. It would likely need to increase the cooldown on Thorns itself to 3 minutes or so, perhaps decreasing the damage dealt by Thorns by 25% and the duration by 10 seconds, but decreasing damage taken by the target by 30%. Admittedly, it's not an advanced idea, mostly modeled after the current healing cooldowns of other classes, but the added threat the tank is generating is a cool bonus. Maybe don't even nerf the damage dealt by Thorns. I'd sort of like that. It would get me to use Thorns more often!

Birthday inc!

I'm all full of exclamation points today :). So my birthday is coming up later this month and one of the things I'm getting is the ubercool Razer Naga mouse. I plan to map a TON of abilities to my shiny new 17 buttons and hopefully get used to them. Once I'm relatively comfortable with it, I'll post a bit about it and how things are going with the transition. I'm not kidding myself that it'll be easy or instant. It took me a while to adjust to mouseover macro healing, it'll take me a while to adjust to click-to-cast healing :P. But I can make it work!

Sunday, February 13, 2011

[Local Time] AFK!

I'd forgotten that I would be out of town this week! My Daddy turned 73 Friday, so Vivi and I went to visit him and Mom. So not much happened, but I still have stuff to talk about!

First off, traveling with a baby is MUCH easier when we can stop at McDonalds and let her play for a little while in between naps. Yay for growth :).

Second, my guild downed Cho'gall! Yay! Without me. Not so yay, but I'm happy for them. I'm glad we're still making progress, though :). Now we just need to hit up Al'Akir and Nefarion. I'm excited about our accomplishment as a guild and I'm really looking forward to killing him next week :).

My little lock didn't make 85 as I'd hoped /sadface. She did make it to 83, though, so I'm happy enough with that. Next week! Also, she looks like a Roman legionnaire now instead of a holy priest now that she's left Hyjal and entered Deepholm :P.

I talked a lot about healing and regen last week and my plans to change my trinkets and spec. Long story short: I picked up the second regen trinket, I'm still unsure as to whether I want to keep Efflorescence in my spec. Once I'm back home (yep, still out of town :P), I'll write up my feelings overall about both those things :).

And now, the new idle treeform animation that may convince me to take out my Treant glyph:

Skip to :52 for the treeform goodness :).

Monday, February 7, 2011

[Local Time] 2-7-11

Woohoo! It's been an amazing two weeks for my raiding guild! Last week we downed both Maloriak and the Twilight Ascendant Council for the first time, then this week we took both out on the first try! In addition, we also killed Atramedes and Chimaeron with relative ease, go us! Chimaeron went down on the second attempt, even! Then we got a full night of attempts on Cho'gall and got him to 8%.
This is my guild and Loot Pinata Chimaeron!

It seems like things have just clicked on the raid front. We aren't struggling with low DPS on encounters anymore and the mechanics don't seem to be tripping people up the way they were just a couple of weeks ago. I'm not sure if it's just getting back into the raiding groove or if the little gear upgrades just make a huge combined difference. Either way, it's a great feeling!

My little lock made it to 82 fairly easily, yay! She replaced her winged helm with something more drab: a whitish hood that, when combined with her new white robe, makes her look a bit like a priest. A convenient lure for the wary souls, perhaps? Mwahahahahaha!

I've been leveling her destruction because affliction has changed so much since I played her last in BC. Now I'm starting to look at it again. I don't yet know if I want to try to make her a PvP toon (or even engage in PvP on any toon), but if I do I'm sure it'll be afflic. I used to love the affliction playstyle, but it seems like the dot-and-forget thing is pretty well dead. I might run with it in a few dungeons (with dual spec costing only 10g, there was no reason not to buy it) and see how I like it. In the meantime, I'm happy playing with fire.

My tsunami deck is complete and the Darkmoon Faire is this week! Only I don't know if I want it anymore :P. With the patch coming out tomorrow that includes an alchemist stone for healers, I'm not sure if I'm better off selling the deck I made and just sticking with the cheap-to-make stone that's a throughput buff. I was lucky and picked up the Jar of Ancient Remedies off Maloriak the other day, so it's not like I don't already have a nice regen trinket. Most likely I'll heal Tuesday with the alchemist stone and see if my mana regen is a problem. If it is, I'll pick up the Darkmoon card. If it's not, then I'll sell it. Or maybe I'll keep the card anyway so I can have a regen set and a throughput set. I'm still undecided!

I'm wondering if I should drop Efflorescence. A lot of druid blogs are advocating it, and have some very convincing math to back it up, but I'm just not sure it's the best course of action for my 10man. We run druid, holy priest, shaman, so we do have lots of AoE healing. I'm usually a tank healer, so my AoE heals are sort of afterthoughts, but it's nice to have two of them. After the Tuesday throughput vs. regen experiment I may change my spec Wednesday and take out Efflorescence, see how that goes. Ah, the wonders of new mechanics!

Thursday, February 3, 2011

Diapers & Dragons: Being a parent and a raider

I think I've mentioned a couple of times now that I have a baby girl. She's a little over 10 months old. And I raid regularly and if it doesn't count as hardcore, it's enough to satisfy me. My guild is 9/12 in 10man raiding now, with a small, close-knit group who's been doing 10s together since the beginning of Wrath, when we were the first ten people to make it to 80. I'm proud of them as a guild and I need no qualifiers about including raiders with children. Anyone can raid, it's all about priorities and setting boundaries and goals.

The nay sayers are wrong

When I got pregnant, I had a lot of people both in and out of WoW tell me to put my raiding life behind me. "You won't have time to play games," they said. My husband works while I stay home. I was told how he wouldn't be able to take care of the baby so I could play occasionally. And just give up the whole concept of us both raiding together.

I was heartbroken by this. These weren't just people who saw WoW as a silly, pointless game, but people who actually have kids and play the game. Surely they knew what they were talking about.

Except they didn't. I talked to my mom, worried and scared that I wouldn't have any free time for games or my own activities. I was looking forward to being a mother, but I didn't want that to be my only definition. She was understanding and patient and, like always, supportive.

"You can make the time," she told me. And I knew it was true because that's what she did. Her situation was different; both my parents worked, but they always spent lots of time with me in addition to doing their own things. Mom played volleyball in a work league for years (until her knees gave out!). She worked in the yard and did crafty things and went shopping (this is a hobby for her, you must understand). Being a mother was probably her most defining characteristic, but it wasn't her only one.

Armed with that confidence, I set out to have my own life in WoW, to keep being a raider. And it's worked out better than I hoped.

Communication & Compromise

My husband and I both play WoW. He's our awesome pally tank, while I'm the trusty tree healer saving his ass from the fire. We've enjoyed this hobby together ever since WoW was released and we played EverQuest together before that. Our WoW characters predate our marriage and playing games together is one of the cornerstones of our relationship. We love it.

He wanted to raid. I wanted to raid. So we sat down and talked about how it would work out. With the 25man guild we were in before Cata came out, it wasn't so hard to swap nights when the baby was young. But we still wanted to raid together and when we split into a 10man guild, losing one of us every other night didn't make for a great raiding environment. We talked about it and decided we wanted to make that happen and we would both do what we could to further that goal.

So he helps out when he's not at work, watches the baby for me sometimes when I need a nap or am making dinner. I try to let him have some time to destress before raids and on our days off from raiding. Neither of us is wholly responsible for our daughter, and that has worked out for the best.

Scheduling my time -- and baby's

The baby books tell you to get the baby on a schedule and keep it up. I second this, wholeheartedly. The first three months there wasn't much scheduling to be done. Vivi ate every two hours for 45 minutes or an hour, then slept until she was hungry again. My time was split between feeding her and sleeping myself. It got better, but during that time I didn't play WoW. I knew it was coming and I let my guild know that I wouldn't be around a couple of months.

Gradually Vivi began to have more of a schedule. The real turning point was the introduction of solid foods, so she would take a nap right after a big meal. Those touchstones throughout the day gave stability to her life, and mine, and a much-needed framework for my day and meeting my goals.

At around five months, Vivi slipped into a relatively regular schedule as far as when she went to sleep at night. Almost every evening she's asleep by 9pm. Now I take her at 8:30 for a bath, a book, and bed. That one thing is the backbone of my ability to raid. I would love for her to go to sleep earlier, but I have deferred to her body's clock. She can't get to sleep (without long bouts of crying) before then, so I don't push it. The baby will always come first, we just plan our lives around her :).

During the day I get about an hour for housework, blogging, and WoW during her naptimes. I try to keep it to things I can get out of easily if she wakes up early (dailies, gathering, leveling alts, research for raids or gear), but the extra time I get before she goes to bed means I don't have to stress about which boss a BiS piece will drop off. I've already looked at the loot tables and made my list. These are things I would have done on Tuesdays or when I was bored of playing (when you have all day to play, it's amazing how often you decide you don't want to :P). Now I do them in smaller pieces.

Honesty with the guild

I knew going in that having a baby would change things as far as raiding. I let my guildies know that, too. I told them when I could raid and let them decide how to work me into that schedule. It turns out that they are truly gracious, amazing people and scheduled raids so that I can make the whole thing. I cannot say enough how thankful I am that I'm friends with these guys.

If I hadn't been as clear or as up front about my limitations, I think there would have been more resentment. Communication is important in all relationships, not just the spousal ones. I was a recruitment officer for a long time and it caused fewer headaches for me if I knew that a recruit had family issues that might come up. I keep the guild up to date and they keep me raiding. It's a good balance :). 

Setting reasonable goals

This is something I've had a hard time with. My expectations of myself were far higher than my ability to reach them and I've had to tamp down the frustration with a heady dose of reality. I can run a daily heroic three or four times a week. I can raid three times a week. I will not have the gear I could get if I could run more of these things. I am not a failure for not managing to be the best.

This is the important thing and probably the biggest lesson I've learned. It's early in the expansion. I have time to catch up and my guild is making progress. I am okay.

Parent AND Gamer

I didn't want to be one or the other. I want to be both and show my daughter that I can take care of her needs and my own as well. I want her to see the confidence that I have and make that a part of her. I don't think parents who have no life outside their children are making the best choices for the child or themselves.

That doesn't mean it doesn't take work. The evening of every raid day is a little rushed, with making dinner and getting Vivi fed and in bed by 9. The schedule is just a bit tighter. And the morning after a raid, which ends at 11:30 (but I never get to bed before midnight), always comes just a little sooner than I'd like. But it's worth it. I have an adorable, curious, giggling little girl who is the center of my universe. And orbiting her I have a great network of friends and games that my husband and I rely on to keep us sane. Our full, rich life is totally worth it :).