Blackrock Depths madness

This is REALLY late. Bad blogger!

So on April 1, right after my resto druid, Mydnas, had turned 50, I entered LFD and drew Blackrock Depths – Prison. BRD-P is a lvl 50-55 instance. The make-up of the party for the meat of this run was as follows:

1. Tank: Redcough (51-Paladin)
2. Heals: Mydnas (50-Druid)
3. DPS: Ballzdeep (52-Shaman)/Eibonix (51-Warlock)
4. We also had a couple of different DPS along the way, but this was the core for the entire run.

Notice that none of the players was higher than 52. Trash were level 54 (Elite) and up, and the end bosses are 56 (Elite).

I won’t go into detail about the whole dungeon. I have to say, though, that it was by far the most intense experience I have ever had as a healer.

We took our little low-level group and made the best of it. The poor tank took major damage on trash pulls, and it was extremely difficult to keep her alive at times. In addition, had it not been for the shaman, who guided us through the instance, explained boss strategies, and threw out some critical heals, we would have been totally lost.

It was a good group, though, and with short explanations for each boss, the boss encounters were the easiest thing to handle. The trash on the other hand? Brutal. However, we survived with only a handful of deaths and no total wipes, ground our way to the end of the instance, and sighed a huge sigh of exultation when we had taken down Emperor Thaurissan!

As we took care of loot, I tossed out “screenshot?” and went up to sit on the throne. The shadow priest that was with us at the end had already left group, but the rest of us positioned ourselves, and, after Redcough barked “lose the felguard!” to the lock, we had our screen.

Blackrock Depths - Cleared!

It was a sweet, hard-fought team victory, one that I will remember fondly for a long time!

Mydnas is a Tree!

Mydnas achieved level 50 at 11:30 this morning. It took me two weeks of semi-casual playing (even with a 4-day break last weekend) to get the 7+ levels since I last wrote about her. I am so psyched to have Tree of Life form finally!

Mydnas, dancin' in the streets

It’s exciting. I started this toon in December. This is by far the fastest I have ever leveled a toon to this point, and it has very little to do with BoA gear (although that helps). Combining the LFD function is a huge part of it, as it makes it very easy to try out a new style of play in a dungeon setting, learning my role and getting the experience as I’ve leveled. It also reflects that I have enjoyed leveling her more than any other character, with the exception of my feral druid (and I know so much more now than I did then!).

Ideally I would like to start PvP-ing with this toon at some point. I tried a random BG once at level 48 as a healer. It was late at night, and I drew Alterac Valley. It was a disaster. Problem #1: The Alliance party was NEVER filled! Problem #2: The Horde quickly came up and camped our graveyard. The result: a quick BG loss, and 5 deaths, 4 of them in the graveyard. It was discouraging, and I logged off and went to bed. Now that I’m 50 and would fit into the next tier, I won’t be attempting a BG for a few levels since I am so low-level for a 50-59 BG. However, I would like to try some more BGs, because I enjoy them on my kitty, regardless of the fact that I am still learning about PvP in general.

So there it is. Hope you like the goofy pics of her lately!

Mydnas is no longer a baby druid

Previously, I have mentioned Myd, my baby druid that I started a few months back in order to experience, among other things, leveling with the Classic dungeon finder, leveling as balance/resto, and learning to be a healer.

Mydnas dancing... or saluting?

Myd is Mydnas, who is 3/4 of the way to level 43 as of this afternoon. She turned 40 on Saturday, March 13. I immediately set her up with a fast mount and dual-spec, and now I have the luxury of questing as a moonkin and running instances as a healer (meaning that I can run instances with a spec that doesn’t have most of its points in the balance tree…). It’s working out much better that way – [Swiftmend] is great, and now I have glyphs that actually help me with heals.

I haven’t used the dungeon finder much over the past several levels, other than to complete the Scarlet Monastery achievement and venture into Maraudon a couple of times. I like to go in and heal at least once per level, because it gives me practice, a chance at gear, and the opportunity to see some places (like Maraudon) that I had never seen before.

Healing is an interesting experience at times. At these low levels, tanks usually seem to have no eye whatsoever on the healer’s mana, and a couple of times yesterday I got into situations where [Innervate] was on cooldown, and I called out “mana,” and then had to sweat through the next pull when I wasn’t given time to drink up. On another occasion, this was compounded by the fact that the previous pull had been an epic slogfest with two large packs of mobs, and no party member had more than 60% health going into the next pull. I popped another mana potion (note to self – farm Goldthorn so you can make more mana potions!), slapped some HoTs on the tank and the warrior, and prayed that time would speed up so [Innervate] would be available sooner. Somehow, we were able to survive, and overall I was able to handle those situations without letting anyone die.

I’ve been having fun healing. At times, I’m still surprised that I’m actually healing; it’s such a foreign experience for me, although at this point I’ve healed enough that it’s only the third-least-common position I’ve played in a group: ranged/spell DPS  are now the lowest areas of my expertise. One of the things I find that spurs me on, other than the fun and interesting aspects of healing, is the desire to be like my heroes: the trees that I’ve raided with who have saved my butt when I’ve drawn too much threat as a cat, stayed with me in BGs or WG, or given me the go-ahead to “do whatev” when tanking random dungeons. Good raiding/PvP healers are awesome, and have my utmost respect. Hence, they’re the ones I want to emulate! In the meantime, I’ll enjoy the leveling experience, and hopefully someday I’ll be half as good as they are.

Update on Myd

As I mentioned before, I started another druid a little while ago. It may seem a bit insane, since there are many other classes to choose from, but Anacrusa is kitty/bear (and is NOT going to be changing that anytime soon!), and I was beginning to have an interest in, among other things, playing a tree and leveling balance. So I created Myd, and have been working on leveling her since.

Right now, I’m on two missions with this toon.

First, I’m trying to get the hang of healing in dungeons. I’m five years late to the game as far as healing is concerned, and it’s quite different from my usual melee mayhem. I’m actually enjoying it – recently, I was a part of two excellent Scarlet Monastery PuGs. My first run, through the Armory, was just awesome. I got to watch a level 36 bear tanking for her first time and doing a wonderful job. I commented early on, “great tanking!” and other party members were agreeing. She mentioned that it was her first time, and commented that it was more difficult than paladin tanking. I told her that my main was a kitty/bear, and she began asking some questions about handling multiple mobs, tanking when there’s a caster in the pull, etc. I was able to give her some advice, and at the end of the run, I whispered her Big Bear Butt’s URL. Hopefully she’ll grow to love (and excel at) feral tanking, because there seem to be so few bears out there these days.

It was a pleasure to be in the smooth runs, because the tanks took care of the tanking, the DPS didn’t go overboard with their threat, and I was able to practice using Grid and Clique, managing HoTs and my mana pool, and gaining confidence in my potential as a healer. I had never thought that I could have a healing mindset before now, but perhaps that was just a mental excuse for having no balls.

My second mission is to reach level 40. At 40, I can do several things, but the most important is that I’ll be able to dual-spec. Right now I’m rocking a balance spec, for reasons of practicality, for both questing and dungeons. That seems to be working out fine at the moment. However, once I dual-spec, I think I’ll feel better about the healing bit while still having the balance spec for utility (questing).

As of last night, Myd is level 36, so I’m making nice progress toward my goal. I’ve been enjoying using the classic dungeon finder (although I’m getting more than my fill of the various wings of Scarlet Monastery), and I feel that I’m really benefitting by playing my healer in instances as I level. I had toyed very, very briefly with changing Anacrusa’s off-spec to resto a couple of months ago, but I think that it would have been a very discouraging experience. This allows me to grow into the spec, which is perfect for me since I’m not the fastest learner.

It’s fun to be able to start a new toon, after playing WoW for three years, and latch onto it like I’ve been able to. I’ll be passing my dormant mage in the next couple of weeks at this pace, and that’s gratifying.

I’ll continue to update my progress with Myd from time to time, as it gives me a slightly fresh perspective on the game (and to this blog, since most of my posts are about the exploits of my feral/feral!).

Low level dungeons and the Dungeon Finder: first impressions

New Druid

A couple of weeks ago, I deleted my long-neglected Death Knight to do something I’ve been toying with for a while now: start another druid.

Big Bear Butt posted an article at the end of December where he talked about deleting his druid alt in order to start a new project where he leveled by bear tanking instances, in order to study the mechanics of tanking through the levels. For some reason, I had been thinking about having a balance/healing druid lately, but that’s something I won’t do with Anacrusa – she’s kitty/bear all the way, at this point. I’ve also been thinking about running as many of the old dungeons and raids as I can before Cataclysm drops, and also hitting up some of the quest areas that I’ve neglected previously. Since I have a thing for druids, and since the DK was a waste of space (he was 61. for. a. year.), I bid him farewell and created my new baby moonkin. I hooked her up with the BoA shoulders and chest, and started questing away.

Last night, with some time on my hands, I decided to try out the new dungeon finder. I made ready, making sure that I had water, health and mana potions, etc., and entered LFD as DPS. After about 15 minutes, the group was ready, and I made to load in… and a DPS was afk or something, so there was a short wait, and then… we’re in!

The Dungeons

Ragefire Chasm was the dungeon I drew. I can’t remember the exact composition of the group, but we had a bear tank who did a very nice job. I don’t remember too much remarkable happening, because it was a clean run. Since I was only level 16, I did not have [Starfire] yet, so I was reduced to poking the elementals with my staff due to their nature damage immunity, but other than that it was generally good-natured and fun.

I learned another thing, which was that I needed to take tons of water with me. Spamming [Wrath] sure eats up the ol’ mana. Armed with two stacks, I entered LFD for another go. After 15 minutes or so (I made a point to check the time when I entered the cue, but forgot to check what time it was when we actually loaded in), I drew Ragefire Chasm again! No big, I thought. This is an easy one.

Well, this group was almost exactly the opposite of the previous. We had a pally tank who seemed to have no idea how to get, much less keep, aggro. I was willing to be magnanimous about it, because he was only level 16. However, it was atrocious. Finally, the warrior decided to take over. He was even worse, and I was pulling threat without even trying very hard. At one point, I piped up and said, “do you want me to root one of them so we can focus them down one at a time?” and the pally replied, “whatever works” and then went back to what was becoming a battle between himself and the warrior to tank trash pulls simultaneously. The warrior then said, “sorry no weapon atm.” At this point, the healer left, so we re-cued and kept going. I healed a bit until we got a priest, and from then on the heals, at least, were stellar. A few pulls later, the warrior picked up a staff, typed “ok i’m gtg,” and we bumbled our way to the first boss in a manner that deserves nothing more to be written about it. After the first boss, which was all that was necessary to “complete” the instance and receive my Sack of, Um, a Cloak, I dropped group. It was getting late, and my sense of humor was going down the tubes.

This morning, armed with three stacks of water, I cued up again, and this time I drew Wailing Cavern. It was the first time I had run it, and it’s a somewhat long instance. We had a bear tank again, and while she was not as awesome as the bear I ran with on Saturday, she did fine. The only member of the group who had run WC before was the rogue, so he took us through, thankfully. The other members were a mage and a druid healer, who kept shouting “OOM” during trash pulls. I was instinctively watching the tank’s health anyway, and would throw some heals her way when I saw her health dip too low, which was more often than I was comfortable with. At one point, the healer shouted “OOM” and then told me to heal… and I linked Recount, which showed that I had done 37% of the heals on the last trash pull. He said, “ok,” and then when we downed the first boss, he leveled and promptly dropped group. It was classic.

Since I could heal, we kept going while we waited for another heal to show up. Another druid. After the second boss, the mage leveled and dropped, and we were joined by a kitty… yes, we had all four druid specs on display for the rest of the run! It was pretty hilarious, as it meant that buffs were at a minimum and it was funny to be throwing [Thorns] or [Mark of the Wild] on the other druids if they happened to not be watching their buffs. We eventually cleared the instance and went our separate ways.

Final Thoughts

I definitely enjoyed my first time using the Classic dungeon finder, and I will be using it again. I went from 10 bars into level 16 to two bars into level 20 between last night and the early afternoon today, so I was pretty happy with that. I now have [Starfire], and a mount, so things should start to go a little faster. Above all, I enjoyed myself, and enjoyed this new-to-me perspective of playing as a hybrid caster-healer druid instead of always being in the boss’s crotch…