More lotro and a bit of WoW

I've been laid up for most of the week with sprained ankles. This has given me a lot of free time to play games, lotro in particular. Oh, and if you're interested in lotro, please read the excellent comment left on my last post explaining the classes far better than I can.

I've been having a blast, especially with my Hobbit Warden. I'd forgotten how relaxing I find farming, and isn't she cute?

And here we see the Shire at sunset. So pretty!

In WoW news, I may be switching healing roles from raid to tank. The holy pally in our raid team wants to try raid heals, so we'll likely be switching roles.  I need to figure out stat weights, and I'll likely spend some of my weekend playing around with Mr Robot, experimenting with different stat weighings. I'll let you guys know what I come up with, but tonight I wander around Bree!

I talk about disc healing

I am a healer again. Okay, I never really stopped being a healer, but I wasn't healing in raids, or 5 mans, or pvp. In fact until last night the last time I'd healed was Oscar Night.

But we had a bit of a raid problem. There's been some reshuffling, and well, you don't really need two shadowpriests in a 10 man. So our awesome resto druid has gone to the dark side, summoning demons for fun and dps, while I've gone back to bubbles.

I managed to top the charts with hps, which does not feel right. I suspect it has something to do with how my shields are counted vs normal heals. My guess (based partly on the overhealing numbers) is that when a shield absorbs X damage and is used up, all X is counted as a heal. It'd actually be quite interesting to see if that even takes armor and other mitigation into account. I know that disc priests have gone from looking horrible on the meters to looking a little too good, which is sad. I honestly do not feel OP. In fact, I feel underpowered, at least when it comes to effective raid healing tools. I end up resorting to shields, simply because I don't feel like I have much else to do. Even with popping Inner Focus, my PoH hits for laughable amounts, so my shields end up being the only way I have to buy time to get people up with Penance and/or Greater Heal.

50% of my healing done last night was PW:S, with the PW:S glyph being another 12%. That seems like quite a bit for one spell, and given the incoming nerf in 4.1, it worries me. I generally have Weakened Soul up on about 3 targets at a time, two of which are our tanks. I'll keep practicing, and working on using my other tools more, and hopefully I'll get to a place where my comfort level is higher.

And in other news....

5/12! Elementium Monstrosity down, with a couple sub 1% wipes.

Click-casting and you: A primer

Given that many people are trying new things in Cat, I figured I'd write a guide or two on various things. This one is on click-casting, keybinds, and how to figure out what to bind to what.

First off, what is click-casting? It's the ability, primarily used by healing classes, to mouseover a target either in raid frames or party frames, and heal them with a click.  It's faster than selecting the target, then hitting a heal.

Second, how do I do this? Well, you have several options. Me, I use the addon Vuhdo, which is a raid frames and click casting addon. Other people use Grid (a raid frames addon) and Clique (a clickcasting addon) together, or simply use mouseover macros and the default frames.
Here's the vuhdo wiki.
Here's a couple blog posts about how to setup Grid and Clique.
Here's some info on mouseover macros.

Third, what do I bind to what?
Okay, this you want to think about carefully and have an overall strategy for. I'll walk you through my disc priest setup for Wraith to give you an idea.
       First I figured out what buttons I can use easily. Since I play on a laptop and use a trackpad, I really only have left and right mouse buttons.  But vuhdo allows me to use ctrl, shift, and alt, as well as combinations thereof, to modify my clicks. The combinations aren't really workable for me, so I'm left with 8 click-casting options.
      Left click and right click: these two are the easiest and fastest for me to hit. So, I bound my two most-used spells to them, Power Word: Shield, and Flash Heal. I changed Flash Heal to Heal when Cat hit, but the sentiment of "most used" is still there.
     Ctrl+left click and Ctrl+right click: big heals. I bound my two biggest single-target heal spells, Penance and Greater Heal, to these two buttons. Having my two big heals use the same modifier button helped me remember the bindings when I was learning them.
     Alt+left click and Alt+right click: select target and levitate. Alt+left click is actually the easiest for me to hit, so it made sense to me to bind something I use a lot there, plus I needed some way to select people from raid frames. And as for levitate, well, I like having it keybound, and when I had a heal bound there, I kept forgetting about it. So it made more sense to just bind non-healing functions to alt.
     Shift+left click and Shift+right click: I never used these in Wraith. I believe they were bound to Renew and possibly Prayer of Mending, but I'm not sure.

Since I'm limited in my click options, I tend to be picky about what I bind and don't bind. If I generally only use a spell on one target (renew, prayer of mending, earth shield), or the spell has a cooldown (pain suppression), or does not need a target (circle of healing, holy nova, power word: barrier), I don't bind them to mouseclicks. All those spells are bound to my number keys, and that's how they get cast.

So when considering what to clickcast, and where to bind it, consider:
like functions (aka big heals all using the same modifier button)
ease of clicking (aka bind most used to left and right click)
how spell is used

It's important not to overload your brain. Start small, maybe just with left and right click bound, and gradually increase. If you're moving to click-casting on more than one toon, try to keep the philosophy consistent. For example, my leveling resto shaman has her fast heal and her to go heal bound to right and left click. For my druid, it's regrowth and rejuvenation. For my pally, it was holy light and flash of light (but I haven't looked into pally healing since 4.0).

Hopefully this will help make the wonderful world of click casting less scary. It's my preferred way to heal and I think once you convert, you'll never go back.

Everything I needed to know about my class I learned from the Arena Tournament

After finishing up the Arena Tournament, I figured I'd share some of my hard won knowledge. My team did pretty good, 20/30, and I found it to be a wonderful learning experience.

I played a disc priest.  It's the class I'm most familiar with, and is generally considered to be pretty decent in pvp.  Of course, my personal survivability in BGs has always been rather stinky, because I tend to approach BGs like I do raiding.  I heal everyone and hope the big bad/many small bads don't notice me.  This is NOT an effective approach to arena.  It's not really an effective approach to PVP in general.

So, my first lesson? Your survivability is your own responsibility.  A dead healer heals no one.  Disc priests have a lovely amount of tools to ensure we survive.  We have our overpowered shields, several different heals, Pain Suppression, and a fear. You need to look at what your class has to help you survive and learn how to use those abilities.

Second lesson, shutting down your opponents.  Once you get the hang of survival, you can move on to annoying others.  There's some overlap here, as many of the abilities that help you survive do so by shutting down your opponent.  A fear's a good example of this.

Third lesson, killing your opponent. For a healer, this is always a bit of a challenge.  Let's face it, healers are not big in the damage department. But every class has some damage-dealing abilities we have access to, even if they're not very powerful.  For a disc priest, you can smite, shadow word:pain or death, use devouring plague, holy fire, penance, and even that aoe heal/damage spell that I can't remember the name of.  I'd suggest running around the world for a bit and killing mobs with various spells, to try to get a sense of what's going to be the most useful/powerful for killing.  You can also try practicing on a target dummy.

Fourth, know your abilities.  This is the biggest lesson of all.  Stuff that you never use in pve, stuff you thought was useless, well, that stuff can be highly useful in pvp.  Take Mana Burn, for example.  It's not a spell I've ever used in pve, and in fact I didn't even realize I had it till someone pointed it out.  But in pvp, denying your opponent mana can win you the match.  Drain a warlock's mana pool and either they have to try wanding you to death or they life tap and make themselves that much easier to kill.

The nice thing about the Arena Tournament is that the gear is equalized.  Everyone gets fully kited out in pvp gear, with access to all glyphs, trinkets, gems, and enchants.  In regular pvp, it's gear+skill that determines the outcome.  If you don't have enough resilience, it doesn't really matter how good you are, you're going to be one or two shot.  So, if you want to get into arena pvp now, I'd say run BGs, gear up a bit, and then find an Arena team.   And even if you're not interested in competitive pvp, pvping is a great way to learn more about your class.  Heck, it might even make you a better raider, since you get a much better sense of your class's oh shit buttons and it teaches you to think on your feet.

Druid vs Priest healing

My baby druid went broccoli. And then I healed some dungeons. And then I got a hot tracker (hotcandy in case you were wondering) and healed some more.

Druid healing is different. Not bad, just different. It may have something to do with the fact that I haven't reached the bottom of the resto tree (I figured I should get the balance talents first), but it's kinda panic-inducing, mixed with periods of boredom.

So let's lay out the difference...
As disc I shield the tank, start POM bouncing, and if the dps takes damage I shield and flash heal them. The tank may get a penance or greater heal, but mostly everyone gets flash heals.

As a tree I hot the tank. Then I wait to see if I need to use a Rejuv or a Healing Touch. I hot the dps as needed. My healing touch casting time varies for some reason so that makes my life a bit more interesting. And I run into mana issues (Innervate is the best spell ever) and I'm overhealing like crazy. The mana issues are a gear thing, I know.

Both disc and tree are best if you can think ahead and predict the damage. I'm not so good at this in 5 mans, since it requires me to actually remember fights beyond run out of the ick. If I ran the instances enough, I probably would retain the "ick about to happen, shield/hot!" information, but who wants to run Outlands stuff that much? But tree is kinda brain-hurty in that I have now been trained to DO SOMETHING when a health bar starts dropping. But if there's already a hot there, I don't need to do anything unless the damage is greater than the hot's healing. And that just seems wrong.

Now, this is not a critique of tree healing at all. I kinda like it, other than the panic bit. It gives me time to go get that yellow dot (ooh herb!). Plus I can pull of miracles in tree that I couldn't have in disc at the same level. One tank and one idiot dps trying to tank? It's a problem, but no longer a "oh god we're all going to die" problem. More of a "grr, I liked having a full blue bar and will you stop trying to kill the nice mage along with you!" problem.

But boomkin is more fun. Heehee hurricane and stuff is dead.

Well, after over a week of no WoW, it's been good to be able to play again. Sadly, I may not end up getting Hallowed on Lyllea, due to lack of trick or treating, but I still have two days to get that stupid helm. All my hunter needs is GNERD rage, and I've just been procrastinating on that. Ick pvp.

I'm currently tinkering with a disc damage spec. Yes, I know, disc is for damage mitigation, but she does do decent damage. Really. Especially with the Glyph of Smite. Granted, shadow might do much more, and eventually I will try it, but for the moment, I love disc.

Other than that, I've mostly been working on my list of stuff to do before Cat and leveling professions. Loremaster's on hold till after the next patch, since I will be able to get an addon that tells me what I've done in old world. Yays.

And just a brief reminder, some pets may become unavailable with Cat. The Azure Whelpling, the Mechanical Chicken, the Ancoma Chicken, and the engineering pets from Gnomer are top of my list to get if you haven't already.
Azure Whelpling drops from elites in Azshara, and that zone's getting a complete revamp.
The Mechanical Chicken takes three quests (Feralis, Hinterlands, and Tanaris) and so if any of those zones is altered, it may go away.
The Ancoma chicken (and I may have that name wrong) is purchased at the racetrack in Thousand Needles, and with the flooding of that zone, the NPC may drown.
And with hints of Gnomer getting a revamp, the schematics for the two engineering pets may no longer be available.

And I have 3 level 60s!

So after a weekend of power-leveling (I got the druid and priest from lvl 51 to 60 in two days), I've been trying to figure out a few things.

1) How to play each one separately.
2) Why my pally now stinks (gear+having no idea what I'm doing is my best guess)
3) If power-leveling mining on two more characters will drive me insane.
4) Why my DK has no talents and how to spec her This was the answer

Well, I've found some answers to number 1, and figured I should share them with you.
First, disc leveling. This is a great forum post that gives you specs, rotations, glyph choices, and gear. I haven't followed the spec exactly, but the rotation is quite effective, and a lot of fun. All I want to do now is play the priest. But she has no rested XP, so I must wait. Grr.

The druid's going feral kitty, and here are two nice guides for leveling feral.

And last, but not least, a slightly outdated guide for leveling as an aoe paladin.

And just for kicks, my favorite profession leveling site is here. The druid's herbalism and inscription are both at around 270, but the pally's still in iron, and well, the less said about the priest's mining and jewelcrafting the better.

I apologize for the lack of entries this week. The truth is...

I haven't been playing Wow. I probably managed about an hour this week. There are several reasons for that, guild drama, the fatigue of hitting 60, but mostly, fear. Yup, fear.

Perhaps some background would make things a bit clearer. I have a family history of addiction. It would be very easy for me to loose myself in WoW. Too easy. Things are hard right now, and one of my coping mechanisms has always been escape. And I'm afraid of giving into that, so I took a break, decided to focus on real world accomplishments. I now have a scarf done, and another started, I've discovered a local D&D group, and I've made the first steps towards surgery. Plus, I got two stories that are due at the end of January started, and a third original fic started as well.

I do have an entry ready to go once I type it, and I do have some things to say about leveling my priest. First off, apparently I chose the "blood elf male most luikely to enjoy taking it up the butt from a Tauren option". In my defense, I wanted to look at a cute butt while leveling, since I knew this character would take a while. Also, I have discovered this character's desperate need for a wand. The damage he does without one, well, sucks monkey balls.

Not much else to say, really. My DK is out of the starting area, and mining her heart out around Ironforge. I need the cash, so she'll be doing this for a while. My hunter will not be moving to Outlands until she is exalted with a faction that isn't Darnassus and gets the gold for a fast mount. Since the only other two factions I'm revered with are Gnomer and the dwarves, and I can't buy a mount from them till the patch, it may be a while.