Raiding - Alts and Casual raiders having some fun

Now that we just do heroic Blackhand on Wednesdays and alts/casuals doing heroic on Thursday and Monday, it's actually been going OK and people can have breaks if they want to, or raid a little it if they feel like it.  Tanking is always an issue, because trying to find alternative tanks is stressful, and it's always ended up with Kyjenn doing it anyway so Aimei can play his druid Lushnek.

Last week we managed to do Iron Maidens with alts and casuals and had to drop people for Blast Furnace.  This week we managed to do Blast furnace with a few of the alts switching to mains.  It was really good, actually and I was pleased.  Only one wipe on Maidens and one wipe on Blast Furnace.  I think the casual players got the hang of it.

I did notice some lazy heroic raiders not getting into the line for penetrating shot.  Too busy tunnelling DPS instead of doing mechanics.  Tsk tsk. I think movement for penetrating shot was a bit lazy in general, with people not moving there unless told to.

We had heaps of time on Monday after doing Blast Furnace so we decided to do Blackhand normal, and we managed to get that down as well! I was super pleased that the casual players got to do Blackhand normal. We had a fair few people vacate for that part, but we still managed to do it with what we had and a one shot as well!  I had forgotten how much easier it is on normal.  And healing was pretty easy too.  I wonder if we could have 2 healed it with 15 people. Maybe that's a bit ambitious.

I had some members of Athanasy asking me if they could come to our raid because their raid was cancelled and they would love to come play for fun, but we haven't played with outsiders since SoO when we did our Saturday flex fun run things.  I wonder if we should relax those rules again, maybe get outsiders to see how relaxed it is or trial people, and get to meet a few new people. Sometimes we would meet people who ended up being great additions to the guild, even if only for a short while. But that's the catch isn't it - none of the people who joined us from doing open invite raiding have stayed long enough to remain part of the clan.  So really, maybe there isn't much benefit to it after all. I must say, I did like meeting new people and it was always a nice opportunity to be able to play with my friends outside the guild. I guess I'll just have to pug into their runs.

Actually I did that on Friday! I had the day off and I saw Fanglore online and asked him if he was about to raid, and if he was short a healer I would be happy to come along. I had already done most of BRF on heroic so I wasn't going to loot anything, so I reassured him that I was not taking loot, in case people worried about that.  So I went along and did a few bosses with them, and they had to do a bit of pugging through premade group finder to get some people.  I was just cruising along healing my own way, and the priest asked me when they were doing Kromog "Why are you not doing more than 40k hps?" Well that was embarrassing.  I wasn't particularly trying very hard to boost healing - I was just healing tanks because they were taking a bit of a beating - and I said offhandedly "I only did one tranq" and the other guy seemed rather disapproving saying "You shouldn't be relying on your major cooldowns to increase your HPS".  I felt a bit embarrassed - I could improve my HPS by blanketing rejuv with germination but that's a dreadfully mana intensive thing to do and didn't really help tank heals much - and I replied "I guess I'm not a very good healer". I hoped he would stop, but that was probably an invitation for more advice and he of course suggested I take germination and glyph of rejuv so I could cast faster HT and dump the glyph of regrowth.  I thanked him for his advice and then we pulled so unfortunately didn't change my talents - which as you know I wasn't going to anyway - but hopefully he was mollified and I did my best to blanket the raid with rejuv but of course that oom'd me which was a pain in the butt.  I much prefer task oriented healing where I focus melee or ranged or tanks - heaps more mana efficient and gets the job done!  But whatever we did, Kromog was defeated and Fanglore's guildies got some loots.

I thanked Fang at the end for letting me tag along - it was fun hanging out with a friend, as well as given the opportunity to roll on a caster trinket off Oregorger (which of course I rolled gold). I forgot to take a screenie with his guildies, that would have been awesome :P

So a new week this week, more Blackhand and more alts stuff.  When are we going to get some meta achieves done, I wonder!!

Comments

  1. Your alts/casual runs actually sound pretty nice! I wish I had more free time to do something like that on WoW! That would get me to reactivate for sure. But since I raid on XIV and I never wanna get rusty, not to mention that I left WoW at lvl90, I just don't see it being possible (and to be honest, I'd probably end up wanting to go back to serious raiding in this game too)! Still, glad to see everyone in your guild can enjoy raiding if they want!

    As for that priest, I personally just always take note of ANY advice I get and see if it can help me improve in a way or another. I think he meant well, but might have worded himself poorly. Some people aren't great at being "helpful" in a nice way!

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    1. I don't think he was being nasty, it's just that I don't want to play that way - and probably everyone will laugh at me for saying that! I bet every other resto druid does it that way and I just wanted to do something different - when we have 3 resto druids and all of us being the same, if we talent a little differently we might be able to fill out as pseudo other type healers as well. But I intend on pugging some Kromog to see if I can make my mana better and have impressive padding :D

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    2. Yea, I don't really get the padding --- I mean, did he want you to heal just for the sake of boosting HPS? I wasn't sure if his advice would help in general (ie: experimenting with new things), but if it's strictly to get higher numbers, that's just silly. Why heal when it's not needed? I'd rather have someone contribute to the fight in a meaningful way (though iirc, it wasn't really possible to DPS much as a healer in this game. Still, even if it's a little, it's better than healing people who are already topped off). To be honest, I wouldn't want to play that way either. It seems pointless. I'd feel useless! It's not about HPS, it's about being smart about your heals.

      ... to me anyway!

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  2. Not relaying on major cooldowns to boost hps? What? But that's what I thought they were there for! Ok, pally healing isn't the same as druid, but if I forget beacon or don't use my wings very often, my hps can really drop. But your comment about not being a good healer, maybe he thought you were asking for help and not joking when you said that? Glad to know that your raiding is going so well though.

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    1. I'm happy with how we were going. Would personally love to do mythic, but I'm happy not to push us till we break. Yeah I don't think he was being trolly it was just me being more embarrassed for not doing big numbers to make myself look better. Or maybe I am just not a good healer :P

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  3. Unless people are dying due to lack I healing (as opposed to not following mechanics/improper use of cooldowns) I feel like HPS isn't a particularly meaningful measure for a healers skill - even more so when raiding with shield orientated healers.

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    1. Challenge modes always make me feel like a good healer LOL - even if crooky helps me out!

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