Jan 8, 2008

1 Council Down, 1 Illidan To Go!

Last night our guild downed Illidari Council on our second night of attempts. It's insane how much AoE damage is constantly raining down on our heads or burning our feet. The ticks (3k-5k) mean most of the raid is in motion at any given time. One of my fears going into it was being a healer on the paladin council member's tank (my husband). Everything I read made it sound like hell for a healadin. People talked about casting lights most of the time and basically going OOM.

One of my assistants, C, did the assigments for this fight (we all take turns), so who got what was a bit out of my hands. Sure enough, I was healing my husband. She also gave him a druid and a priest for the first attempt. We tried the fight a couple of times and it became obvious that 1) the priest was overkill 2) raid damage was punching us and stealing our lunch money. So I handed the priest back to C. I've raided with the druid for 2 guilds now, so we know each other pretty well. He's a heck of a healer.

Now, I'm going to confess something here. I don't normally keep Light's Grace up by casting a lower rank Light when it's about to run out. Yep, I've read all about it, including the testimonies of people that swear by it. But every time I try it, I feel like it's a cop-out for not designing your healing strats properly. I waste so much time fake healing, when a priest can jump in far better and with more mana efficiency when you do actually need a big heal.

But I was a bit sceered on this fight, so I decided to go ahead and set myself up to do the LG dance of death. All of my spells are /stopcasting macros tied to Clique, so I swapped things around and was good to go. They start the fight and immediately I see something is wrong. Very wrong. I start saying so to my husband, and he responds with some definite concern. He's not a huge fan of taking away his healers, let lone finding out one of the remaining ones is having issues. My Flash's are only healing for about 750 hp per cast, when they're supposed to be in the high 1.8k hp range. /freak out

Then I realize I changed the wrong spell and was effectively casting rank 1 Flashes. Nice. So the druid solo heals my husband (but doesn't know it, muhahaha) while I redo some code. lol I get back into the fray with little issue.

But after 2 attmepts with the rolling Light's Grace, I go right back to 100% Flashes. I just didn't need to be casting big heals. Between me and the uber Lifeblooms, my husband only died early on one attempt, and that was a combo of Judgement of Blood, Blizzard, and normal hits. Other than that, we rocked the house! /proud We may be wiping, but it wasn't because of my healing. (Interrupts resulting in crazy raid damage seemed to be the main issue. We slapped a rogue and mage on the priest and it helped a ton.)

For the final attempt where we actually downed the Council, I ponied up to the consumables bar, loading up on +healing and +intel. Why yes, that does fly in the face of the recommended mp5 stuff, but that's just how I roll. 1.9k Flashes with BoL + book = ftw.

2 comments:

Christopher said...

Woo! Gooooooooo Ascent? (Can I say that if my main is neither a raider nor horde? >_>;;)

I'm a member of the Church of Rank 4 Holy Light (TM), though I recognize it's only situationally useful. It costs slightly more (10 MP) and heals for slightly less than a Rank 7 Flash of Light, but the trade-off and generally the equalizer, I find, is that Holy Light has a slightly higher percent chance to critically hit, with talents. Remember that we get a 5% boost to our holy crit from talents, but an additional 6% boost to crit for Holy Light. That extra 6% critical chance makes the spell somewhat more attractive, but since no healer should ever base the crux of her healing on critical hits alone, I understand the hesitation. The idea is that you trade a little extra cast time for a little less healing before crit, but you crit more and if you need to, you can rank up to HL11 to really heal the hurt. Combine with trinkets and spells and it's not outside reach (my reach, anyway) to heal 8K health in 2 seconds for 400 mana. Your mileage is considerably greater, I suspect.

Those far wiser and no doubt better looking than yours truly have contributed positively to the theorycrafting surrounding the issue at hand. I submit to you: The Holy Light for your easy reading, have you not already run across it in your travels.

I mention it's useful specifically, and I can give an example. In Karazhan, during the fight with Illhoof, I use almost exclusively HL4. With Light's Grace active all the time, I find that healing party members for ~1.2k to ~1.4k is sufficient, which is what I would expect from FoL7. However, when he puts the chains up and the targeted party member starts taking damage, 2.5 seconds to throw out a large heal is simply too slow. 2 seconds gets the job done, I've found. For other fights, this method is completely unfeasible. Shade of Aran, for example, keeps the healers moving almost constantly. You don't really have time to putz around with keeping Light's Grace active. Illhoof is an easy one, though, because the only time I ever have to move is if I get sacrificed, and even then I've got a free run back to my healing spot thanks to bubble. =)

A caveat: then again, my Flashes don't come anywhere near 1.9k. Yowza. /I'm_not_worthy

Valyre said...

I think the main issue is a mental one. I've tasted heaven and I don't want to face reality. I had the 5 piece T5 set bonus before they nerfed it. /cry

Once you start throwing around 1.5 sec Lights, it's hard to settle for the "new and improved" set bonus. Out of deep bitterness and longing for my set bonus back, I feel a bit of anger everytime I cast that spell.

Honestly, the crit angle isn't one I've put much thought into. You make a good point. In theory, that would give my Lights about a 29% chance to crit. /boggle I also do have the mana reducing libram which makes rank 4 actually cost less mana than max Flash, tho I have negative feelings towards that book, too. (Whole other issue.)

At the same time, I always work alongside at least one other healer, a druid or priest. Our healer group is also full of cross-healing fanatics.

Zomg, the 1.9k Flashes were while I was hopped up on the +healing flask, tree buff, BoL, BoL libram, stix o' fish, and anything else I could get my grubby hands on. Like I said, I was sceered.