Gimme a Super Soaker and I’ll Heal You

Electrika is now in the 60s, which is actually past the point where each and every shaman I have ever made has fallen face first into the delete button.  This is my first shaman ever that can actually FLY.

I’m starting to like shaman healing, mostly because I envision myself doing two things:

1. I am throwing buckets of water at people.  Lots of buckets.
2. I am making it rain on their heads.  SAD STORMCLOUD FOLLOWS YOU EVERYWHERE.

I like picturing my party looking like soaking wet cats by the end of the dungeon.  And if I’m sometimes secretly pretending to drown everybody in my party, does that make me a bad healer/person?

ALL THE WATER, YOU’RE IN IT

I gotta say, leveling a healer from scratch helps immensely in feeling comfortable with that role, even if you take a break for a few weeks and come back to it later.  For example, Ailabeth has leveled to 89 completely in Shadow.  Whenever I use her Disc spec to heal in transmog runs (because Holy has too much going on for me to handle), the feelings are not good.  I am pushing buttons that seem like good buttons to push, but not enjoying it because there are probably better buttons to be pushing and/or a better order to push them in, and we’re all getting a little too close to death for my tastes.  Also, I inevitably look for Dispersion when I’m low on mana.  NOT HAPPENING.

But Electrika shows that increased competence leads to slightly less panicking, which is immensely beneficial.  I had a couple of “AMAZING! IT’S LIKE I KNOW WHAT I’M DOING!” moments in Blackrock the other day, which of course I failed to screencap.

After clearing the Grim Guzzler of all the bargoers, we exited out the back onto the small, circular platform that rises above the anvil you use for Dark Iron.  We had an overenthusiastic enhancement shaman DPS who noticed Lord Incendius down below and decided to engage him by jumping there.  Perhaps predictably, he aggroed the mobs on the opposite half of the circular platform.  In a scene somewhat reminiscent of Gnomeregan but with way more fire, those mobs proceeded to run through the rest of Blackrock to find us, dragging along every additional monster they could find.

I saw them running for the door when I followed the tank down, so I knew sheeyit was coming.  In the chaos that followed (Dark Iron dwarves!  Golems!  Lord Incendius!  Fire elementals!  ALL THE THINGS!), the DPS shaman died.  Everything attacked him first and all at once before the tank could get aggro on some of it (and I inevitably got aggro from the rest of it by SPAMMING ALL THE HEALS).  One other DPS was a clothie, and the poor chap went down almost instantly while I was focused on keeping the tank and myself up and running so we could get control of the situation.  When all was said and done, I somehow managed to keep the last DPS standing too.  We stood proudly atop a pile of corpses!

I will probably never be so badass again.

Similarly, when we jumped into the Ring of Law, I somehow aggroed the spectators in the ring above.  I don’t recall them ever doing that before, but the moment I saw my portrait go red, the “OH CRAP” warning bells went off.  Indeed, All The Things from the nearby area charged me just as we were fighting the first boss there, but Reincarnation was off cooldown, so I popped back up and kept on going LIKE A PRO.  ONLY the DPS shaman died that time, and I have no idea how I did it – I was so low on mana!  Possibly the tank was better prepared for the sheeyitstorm?

Electrika’s now transitioned into Burning Crusade dungeons and Death Knights.  I always thought the party of “all DKs all the time” was something of a joke, but I actually had a party of all Death Knights the other day, and every last one of ‘em was in Blood Presence and Death Gripping crap until I said something.  One was still in Blood Presence even after that!

The real big shift that I’ve noticed, however, is how tanks now pull a lot of crap all at once.  I swear this started pretty suddenly in Hellfire Ramparts.  The first big pull is from the door to the guy who calls the warhounds.  Then they pull everything in the middle + first boss.  There’s a bit of a breather when they drag the two guys at the foot of the stairs up to the small group upstairs, but then the open area is a huge pull of ALL THE THINGS.

Have we gotten braver?  Have we gotten dumber?  Has Blizzard placed more mobs more closely together?  I don’t know, but it’s such a huge amount of damage all at once, even with platewearers, that I have to be ON THE BALL or they die when they do that.   Now that I’ve gotten Healing Rain, I start casting that before the tank has gotten everything grouped up tightly, targeting the approximate spot where I think the tank going to end up.  Once that’s up to cover for the DPS getting aggro and to buy me a bit more time to get a massive heal off for the tank, I start churning out those big buckets of water (Healing Wave/Greater Healing Wave/Chain Heal).  If I’ve misjudged whereabouts the tank will stop running and/or the tank runs JUST out of range, tank will likely end up dead.

Dancing With Spirit Wolves
I’m the one with Water Shield. Not like you can really tell …

People say that healing is boring, and I do see lots of healers jumping around and/or pulling crap.  I can’t say the same, since I find I have to pay much more attention to what’s going on than I do as a DPS.  Maybe it’s just because I’ve leveled so many DPS classes but so few healers?  In any case, I have pretty much zero screenshots of Electrika, because OMFG THE TANK OH GEEZE.

p.s., I’ve written before about totally colluding with the healer to get an annoying DPS killed.  I’VE NOW BEEN ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE OF THAT REQUEST.  It was so WEIRD.

When LFR becomes a daily thing …

YOU LEAVE MY MOMMA OUTTA THIS
YOUR momma, on the other hand …

At first, I thought I was entering a kind of “zen zone” where LFR could no longer disturb my natural balance of awesome.  Perhaps the repeated wipes necessary to take out Lei Shen had expanded my perspective!  It was like suffering increased my capacity to … uh … suffer.  So despite being in several LFR groups with some issues, I was generally able to keep my sense of humor about the whole deal.  It was like I had given up on thinking about weapons!

For example, after a mind-boggling wipe on Jin “The Zap” Rokh, Cal and I cheerfully took on the role of lifeguards for the Isle of Thunder Community Pool:

OUT OUT OUT
No kids allowed! The adults wanna do respectable laps.

Or how about the time I asked who was on nest duty?

I got a form. It’s signed and everything. “No Nest Duty for Thermalix.”

I was bringing my own brand of special to LFR, and it was great!

Alas, it seems gear still has the ability to make me go all angrypants, destroying my delusions of self-mastery.

After having gone through Vault of Mysteries with a surprisingly derpy group (trust me, if buttonmasher me is #3 in DPS, there are SEVERE PROBLEMS PRESENT), I was back in the Shrine making some ragefaces at the wall.  Will of the Emperor gave me a hat (AGAIN) that was worse than what I had on, and this was especially galling because the damn boss also drops a bow!  I then realized that I had unread mail from The Postmaster.  Hmmm.

It occurred to me that although I started the Elegon fight, I hadn’t been around to complete it.  While it was first time I’ve seen a tank go through the floor, it was not the first time I’ve seen a tank use Elegon to blast the rest of the party in a show of pent-up subconscious aggression.  As you might expect, the group wiped.  The overly enthusiastic (and possibly new?  I mean, the floor, everybody knows that it vanishes by now, right?) tank pulled again before I made it back into the room.  I got locked out, but of course Elegon was still able to damage me with his abilities while no one could heal me.  Splendid!  Running low on potions and healthstones (dear warlocks: they are a renewable resource, so stop hoarding them), I had to hearth out to avoid dying in the hallway.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to open this mail, but I did.  As I feared, inside was YET ANOTHER Bottle of Infinite Stars (which is worse than both my trinkets).  I’ve gotten a bazillion of these things, so I really do think Elegon is messing with me now, just for the lolz.  He’s like, hey, Therm, good seeing you again.  HAVE A BOTTLE OF INFINITE STARS.

At that point, SO MUCH FOR MY ZEN.  I swear to Gawd, if Elegon gives me ONE MORE Bottle of Infinite Stars before I get a weapon, I am going to seriously go back in time, rip off one of his wee little starlegs and beat him upside the head with it.  YOU HEAR ME, ELEGON?  I WILL HAVE TO RESORT TO VIOLENCE.  You know, something more violent than shooting him with lots of magical arrows.

I’m including this last image because it makes me happy, not because it’s relevant.

What We Do While Waiting
We torment the small snails for all the times their larger cousins tormented us.

Pain vs Potential

They Both Have a Plan
One’s more optimistic than the other.

I am not a natural PvPer.  With the exception of mosquitoes who must and will die the moment they get within my reach, I generally operate somewhere between a “live and let live” type philosophy and a “leave me the hell alone” sort of lifestyle.  I don’t derive much enjoyment from the notion of beating an opponent, skilled or otherwise – I’d just rather not deal with said opponent in the first place.

My friend Goa has been attempting to get me more into PvP these days. Because I think that you should be open minded about things and I like to hang out with my buddies, I agreed to give it more of a shot.  He crafted a set of PvP armor and a good axe to get Mechalis started, but overcoming my personality and habits is still uphill work.  So far, he can get me into maybe three or four random battlegrounds, max.

Usually, one or more of the following will happen multiple times:

1. I finally get to the site of action, only get my head smashed in by four or five different players at once before I get more than one skill off.
2. I get rogued in the back, and have to stand there stunned while I get my head smashed in by four or five different players at once.
3. I get rogued in the back, and the rogue proceeds to cheerily mince my kidneys before dispatching me with a solid stab to the spine.
4. I get left alone at Blood Elf tower and I lose the joint to the Alliance.
5. A priest will let me try to smack them down, then get bored with me and Fear me.  By the time I am un-Feared, said priest is gone, and so is my dignity.
6. A boomchicken will laugh at me.  THEY MOONFIRE ME EVEN!
7. I get left alone at the Farm and I lose the joint to the Alliance.
8. I get really cheesed off by the way all my opponents insist on jumping around like monkeys on crack.  STAND STILL WHILE I WHACK AWAY AT YOU FOR GAWD’S SAKE, IT’S NOT LIKE I’M GOING TO GET ANYWHERE ANYWAY!
9. I make the mistake of reading the bg chat.
10. I make the mistake of responding in bg chat.
11. I make the mistake of doing both in the same bg.
12. I try to kill the healer, but nobody else is helping me and I’m terrible, so the healer just keeps on healing his/herself back to full.
13. Speaking of healers: I get rogued in the back, and I survive the initial stun and ensuing damage to my vital organs, but while I am trying to murder said rogue in a blind rage, a healer comes up and heals the blasted cad back to full health.
14. I click fruitlessly at the warlock candy or potion button, waiting for the rogue to stop rogueing me in the back already so I can at least pretend to do something here.  THEN I DIE.

ROGUED AGAIN
Rogues, they’re like an infestation. OF DEATH.

I get that the element of combat (and hence regular personal death) is part and parcel of PvP.  I’m fine with dying, I really am.  It’s just that I suffer from a feeling of intense hopelessness when I’m dead two seconds after waiting twenty-eight seconds to resurrect, or when I die immediately after running all the way to where the fighting is.  I end up feeling frustrated that others can smash me to pieces so easily when I can barely put a damn dent in their armor.

A lot of it’s skill, which I lack. (I’m not gonna lie about that.)  But it definitely helps to be alive (and not stunned/feared) in order to use what skill you have!  Goa assures me that PvP is much more fun if you have the gear to survive it, but there are two major problems for me in this approach.  First, I had hoped the fancy PvP set he made would make a clear difference in living when compared to wearing full PvE stuff, but it seems that the best use of the crafted PvP set is upping gearscore to get into LFR.  Second, since it pretty much is like wearing tin foil when actually PvPing, that must mean you either have to gear up in tandem with everyone at the beginning of the expansion (which is what Goa did), or have such a burning love of PvP/proving your skills/being the best/SOMETHING that you’re willing to get your ass handed to you in the same settings day in, day out, until you finally can afford the fancy gear that will actually protect said ass.

Reflecting on my weak attempts so far, I can think of TWO times I had discernible fun.

1. Violaryn somehow managed to get the flag from the Alliance base all the way back to the Horde one without getting horribly mangled.  I am pretty sure the Alliance was sleeping at the keyboard.
2. I got my camera angle turned around taking a picture, and in trying to straighten it up, I fell off the boat in Strand of the Ancients.  I had to spend the entire bg swimming in to shore.

The first makes PvP sound promising – if I could do that more, that’d be great.  The second makes me think that if I find swimming to shore that much more enjoyable, I may never like PvP.

But I don’t want to give up just yet.  So HOW do you make PvP fun if you’re incompetent at it and very undergeared?  Here are my ideas:

1. Go in wearing nothing, because underwear always makes things funnier, and it’s not like your gear does a darn tootin’ thing for you anyway
2. Attempt to screenshot the most spectacular deaths ever, like being mind controlled off a cliff while on fire while wearing one of the “Love is in the Air” holiday dresses while riding a Swift Forest Strider or something
3. Go in wielding something stupid, like a Dark Herring, and really believe that people notice it
4. Magically convince Blizzard to make a bg set on the Isle of Giants, where you can use Primal Direhorns to literally squish other players or Primal Devilsaurs to eat those same Primal Direhorns, because everything is better with dinosaurs
5. Magically convince Blizzard to separate groups by gearscore as well as level
6. Go in so drunk, you can’t see a thing

I’m thinking 1 and 6 sound the most reasonable.

Lei Sheeeeeeeeeyit

Let’s Talk About This!
I need a minute to think up another excuse.

When Thermalix logged in late last week, Cal informed her that it was high time she shot Lei Shen in the face.  She was forced to admit that he had a point, since the one reason she had given for not doing so was “I CAN’T GO UNTIL HE GETS NERFED INTO REALITY,” aaand the dude got nerfed.  Unfortunately for her, she didn’t have a second argument to fall back on.  Therm couldn’t point to how she didn’t know WTF she was doing, because that’s normal and also the standard mode of operation for most non-tanks in LFR.  She couldn’t point to gear being a barrier, because she had the gearscore to get in.  She couldn’t claim that she had to wash her rocket camel, because it exploded the week before.

Here’s what Therm DID know about Lei Shen before going in:

• Has face tentacles or cancerous growths
• Would probably be the kid who sticks his finger in an electrical outlet for fun
• Most LFRs run screaming before they even take on the adds in front of his room
• He doesn’t drop a ranged weapon

Bring It On
C’mon Lei Shen, let’s just get it over with.

It’s hard to say whether more or less knowledge would have helped.

“I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of My Outfit” Set

“I Can’t Hear You Over the Sound of My Outfit” Set

Class: Hunter (Engineering required for goggles)

H: Truesight Ice Blinders | S: Spiritbinder Spaulders | Cl: Azureborne Cloak
Ch: Dragonstalker’s Breastplate | Wa: Links of the Disintegrator | L: Dragonstalker’s Legguards
G: Radiant Gloves | Wr: Not shown | B: Lifestep Treads

Crossbow: Brutal Gladiator’s Heavy Crossbow

Thoughts: HELLO HI THIS OUTFIT IS HAPPY!  WHEEE THERE’S SO MUCH AWESOME STUFF IN THE WORLD HI HELLO NO I HAVEN’T HAD TOO MUCH CAFFEINE WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?  YAY!

Therm’s last few outfits have been (more or less) muted, sensible and possibly even washable!  Therefore, it makes sense that my subconscious would reject this whole “subtle” trend and point out that the fancy troll belt Therm had on actually matched the Dragonstalker crap she’s been hoarding in Void Storage.  Just by coincidence, of course, I like both purple and obnoxious stuff.  I swear to Gawd if hunter armor came covered in glitter and sequins, I’d wear it.

This look reminds me of when I was three years old or so, and insisted on dressing myself for the day in a t-shirt, yellow ballerina tutu, red tights and totally awesome (loller)skates instead of shoes.  I suppose this is a slightly more adult rendition of my persistent, utter inability to pick an outfit that doesn’t look like it was assembled in the dark.

As a side note, I don’t really see how you could sit at a table wearing that belt without jabbing it with the tusks/breaking them off/in general being uncomfortable.

I had most of this stuff to start with (being a packrat and all).  The shoulders were the worst to obtain.  Though the boss that drops ‘em is easy to get to, he refused to relinquish them for many runs.  That is, he witheld the shoulders until he managed to kill me with poison because I wasn’t paying attention.

Well, whatever it takes, I guess.

“Chromis Watch” Set

“Chromis Watch” Set

“Chromis Watch” Set

Class: Hunter (with bow), Shaman

H: Not shown | S: Amice of the Stoic Watch | Cl: Not shown
Ch: Chromis Chestpiece | Wa: Njord Belt | L: Chaotic Wrappings
G: Gloves of Augury | Wr: Not shown | B: Njord Boots

Bow: Ironfeather Longbow

Status: Finished

Thoughts: Ok, so Ragnaros’ platform in the Firelands may not be the most attractive background for a set that’s primarily blue and gray, but that’s where I was when I remembered to take pictures, so there you have it.

With the exception of the background, this set belongs to the “muted and subtle” color scheme that I’ve been running with for three or four mogs in a row now.  I’ve been working on a hyper obnoxious set just ’cause I HAVE to balance all this niceness out somehow, but the shoulders haven’t dropped for it.  This is probably why the shoulders for this respectably calm set actually dropped the first time I ran Ulduar for ‘em.

WTB Ironfeather Longbow in different colors.

JurassACK Park? JurACKic Park?

Isle of OMG
It’s called “atmosphere,” “the scene,” or “the mood,” and it sets the tone for the evening. Here, it involves dinos with cannons.

Never, ever leave Therm alone on the Isle of Giants, not even for a minute.

Isle of OMG
So bad for you, yet so tasty.

If she’s not paying attention and facepulling Primal Devilsaurs as a result, she’s doing other sorts of dum’ bass things.  For example: if she’s disguised thanks to an Intact Direhorn Hide and she’s using a Devilsaur as a pet, can other (non-tamed) Devilsaurs tell whether or not hers is One of Them?  I mean, he totally blends in and all!  This is where he’s FROM!  They’re totally family!

Isle of OMG
EMERGENCY BAD TROUBLE HELP OW

Yes.  They can smell it, Therm.  They can smell you.