Lord Illidan Stormrage Vanquished!

Raiding

After mentioning in “Single-Target Priestly Healing in ‘Echoes of Doom’” some of the troubles that the we’d had last week while fighting against the Illidari Council, the Drunken Badgers returned to the Black Temple this evening with amazing results.  Not only were we able to defeat the Council, we took the opportunity to go head to head with The Betrayer and emerged victorious!  Despite the recent nerfs that have plagued mobs since Patch 3.0.2. and the fact that we’re significantly behind other trend-setting guilds, we’re extremely pleased to have managed to scratch Illidan from our list.

Though I’ve been raiding with the Badgers for about a year now, I’ve only been a member for perhaps a third of that time.  I joined with them shortly after they organized raids for Gruul’s Lair, originally on my kal’dorei and more recently on the perky priestess.  Our performance has been nothing less than stellar: within a handful of month we’d managed to place Gruul on farm status, enter Serpentshrine Cavern, slay Lady Vashj, battle Kael’thas, and clear Hyjal Summit.  I’m extremely proud that I’m a member of my guild and look forward to our future success in the Sunwell and beyond when we take on the forces of the Scourge in Wrath of the Lich King.

Even more surprising, however, has been our casual stance towards raiding.  While we don’t consider ourselves casual raiders, we do maintain a rather casual raiding schedule.  Beyond extranneous raids such as Zul’Aman and the occasional Karazhan badge run, we raid just one evening a night for five hours.  Guilds that have been raiding simultaneously with us — or even longer — have failed to make as much progress as we have even given a more rigorous raiding schedule.  To me, that indicates that we have some damned fine players in our raid and that our leadership has been extremely effective.

Of course, we Badgers do have our quirks.

Regarding the actual raid itself, I was quite impressed with my performance this evening.  Despite the lack of a raid-wide heal like Chain Heal or Circle of Healing, I was third overall on the healing meters.  This is in addition to all of the additional benefits of the Discipline tree, such as damage mitigation and absorption as well as buffs to spell damage.  I would have expected my standings on the meter to be much lower due to the decreased healing power of the tree.  Coupled with what I feel is an exceedingly low overheal value given my tendency to heal regardless of health missing in order to acquire both a full stack of Grace and Divine Aegis, I’m pretty proud of myself and how I’ve handled the transition from Holy-Discipline hybrid to full Discipline.

The spell of the evening was clearly Penance, which comprised of nearly 30% of my effective healing.  This is definitely a good thing since I think it’s the spell in my arsenal that has the highest Health Per Mana ratio.  I’m still trying to decide if Flash Heal is the way to go — contrary to pre-Patch 2.0.3 downranking of other spells — or if I should be using it less.  I was also extremely shocked to see that I somehow managed to get a Greater Heal this evening that hit for 14,925; with Divine Aegis, that meant that my target was instantly encased in a bubble that would have absorbed nearly 5,000 points worth of damage!

Furthermore, I clearly excelled in situations where single-target healing was needed while those fights that involved extensive splash damage I tended to falter.  And falter a lot.  In particular, I think that I’ll need to try to see if my healing assignments can be changed in future weeks.  There were a number of fights where I was assigned to raid heal which seemed rather silly.¹  With the lack of a raid-wide heal, I was forced to heal each raid member individually while the individuals tanking were not benefiting from my damage reduction buffs.

I think that I still need further practice with my build in order to be even more effective!  In particular, I’m having to reconsider how I gear myself and what spells are most beneficial.

Related Posts

1. Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”
2. A Player’s Secret Weapon: the SWOT Analysis
3. Arena Shape-Up — Redux!