I have some tips on Valithiria Dreamwalker – spec, glyphs, gear changes, UI, rotations etc – I’ll post those a little later as a mini tips post (and later, I’ll integrate it into the Frostwing Halls tip post). For now, I just wanted to reflect on our first encounter.


Don’t discount your druids

Contrary to what some people may believe, druids are strong on this fight. The basic thinking in my own guild (much to my extreme frustration) was something along the lines of “Pallies are obvious, and priests have big heals.. so you druids will have to heal the raid.” That was very disappointing for me, because I had spent half the day planning on how I was going to respec, regem, and re-enchant my gear – basically maxing out my character for the fight. I worked really hard to get ready, and I was upset that I was going to be relegated to raid healing.

The consolation prize was, “you’ll still be putting your HoTs on her.”

Bah..

I wanted to show them druids aren’t automatically the bottom of the barrel for this single-target fight. I know I’m not going to catch the pally (or in our case, the shaman). But I also know I can give the priests a bloody good run for their money, and I can’t help feeling annoyed when I’m relegated by default, because “everybody knows that class XYZ is better for this fight”. Especially when MANY of the posts I had read were from people saying they would favour paladins and druids for healing her.

At the last minute I was swapped to healing her, rather than the raid – and I achieved what I wanted to, putting out some very respectable HPS.


It’s not about showing off

I wasn’t setting out to “win on the meters”. It really wasn’t about showing off or pulling massive numbers. I just wanted to show that we are capable of putting out solid HPS on the fight. It makes me cranky when people pigeonhole us as being “just” raid healers. It makes me especially angry when it gets sugar coated with comments like “you’re just so good at raid healing, that’s all.”

How can I explain… yes, I wanted “glory”, but not in a public sense. This is the one fight in the game that we can put on DPS shoes – tune our gear for maximum output, and try to stick to a watertight rotation – and I wanted to tackle that challenge. Not because I want to be a DPS class – I definitely do not. I just like tackling different situations.

This fight is completely different to how I’m used to healing – we think on our feet a lot of the time, and I’m not used to trying to stick to a strict spell rotation. I know I can think on my feet to pick the right spells and keep people alive – but I wanted to challenge myself to see how well I could do if I had to stick to best practices and a particular spell order.

It wasn’t so much a competition with the other healers, but a challenge to see how I could stack up if I had to turn my healing on its head.


I did well, but I’m not happy

I’m not completely happy with how I went; I pulled about 11k HPS, which was competitive. I ended up sitting between the pallies and priests (shaman at the top). But I know I could have done so much better.

I missed some portals due to tunnel-vision, and didn’t really get a hang of breaking the green clouds until the end. The most stacks I had were probably 2-3, where other healers had 15-20! So I know I need to tighten that up.

I also realised (in a panic) that I couldn’t have Dreamwalker on Grid, so I didn’t have my normal HoT timers. Squinting at buffs on my target frame wasn’t working, so I had to quickly download an extra HoT timer to help me out. I downloaded Dotimer and frantically set it up, blown up to a billion times the normal scale. It was quick and dirty, but it was better than frame buff icons. Hard to get used to though – so I had a slight handicap there. Timing my HoT refreshes wasn’t great – I was clipping badly.

But I was competitive, even with the UI handicap and the hopeless cloud-flailing (ugh.. so annoyed at myself!)

I tell you what though – I think I got a taste of DPS tunnel vision – no wonder DPS classes have a bad rep for standing in stuff or being less aware of their surroundings (just generalising here, obviously). It’s so easy to slip into your own little world of MUST PUMP OUT BIGGER NUMBERS. I barely saw the room around me – it all melted away, and all I saw were HoT timers and portals.


Next time: tighter HoTs, less flailing

So… armed with a bit of experience, my goals for next time:

  • make a target macro so I don’t keep losing her as my target. Yes, she’s a whopping great dragon in the middle of the room, but I still managed to click on other people by accident. Seconds count, and fumbling on your target is bad.

  • tweak Dotimer to get my HoT rotation as tight as possible (done – I’ll show you guys later)
  • DON’T FAIL AT CLOUDS
  • Mark healers so we don’t all run for the same portal



So.. the heal-to-DPS fight – what did I think of it?

I really liked it, for something different. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in this kind of role all the time – I do prefer the “think on your feet” style of healing, rather than just sticking to the highest HPS rotation possible. But I enjoyed the challenge of a healing encounter that was entirely different to anything we’ve seen in the game.



Possibly Related Posts: