Healing Heroic Halls of Stone

Kam had just the Halls of Stone left to complete for his Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement, significant not for the 20 points but because then I would have seen all the 5 man instances in Wrath. Luckily I got into a group consisting of mad fire mage, warlock, paladin tank and warrior tank/dps. So who was healing then?

Yes, it was me. Putting his Enhancement gear aside, Kam switched to healing spec and equipped his collection of crusty resto gear, ranging in power from Drape of the Offering Branch from Sholazar Basin to Steamcaller's Totem from FL 25. I really ought to do something about that cloak. The trash was fine, but how did those bosses go?

Krystallus
A giant stone guy who does a knockback then stun much like Gruul. This was done messily - the knockback interrupts healing and the stun is also a pain, I kept ES and riptide on the tank, but the group were spread out to avoid the stun damage, so CH was useless. We eventually DPSed through the annoying stuns using Bloodlust, and I managed to keep everyone up.

Maiden of Grief
Good grief this was hard! She stuns the party for 10 seconds often, the trick is to step into a void circle just before so you get broken out. My PvP trinket worked the first time to break the stun, however I sometimes managed to fail to get into the void circles in time and got stunned for 10 seconds, during which the tank died. Eventually we sort-of got this right although a few people died. Messy.

The Tribunal of Ages
A crazy survival encounter during which the group are rushed by increasingly large waves of adds. The Healing Stream totem was nice to mitigate the random party-wide damage here. When the encounter cranked to 11, we were quickly swamped and I was killed. Luckily with 2 tanks we managed to hold the adds for long enough for Brahn to activate the lightning switch and kill them all... we were dead, but ran back while he was doing his interview. Messy.

Sjonnir the Ironshaper
Some sort of tank and spank but with adds and a nasty lightning shield buff which should be spellstolen. The fight was not bad but Sjonnir's damage was massive so the MT died fast, the OT took over and I kept him up till right near the end, when he took a 15k hit and died too. Luckily the DPS nuked Sjonnir and he died with the rest of us dead. Messy.

Conclusions
I think I might try Healbot, using Grid and pressing spells was a bit clicky. I also need far more practise at healing, which may be forthcoming in patch 3.2. I could do with getting that healing gear enchanted to!

Northrend Dungeon Hero and Master
The result was finally I've done all the Heroics at least once and a nice set of achievements spammed guild chat. Sadly gear-wise I am pretty much done in Heroics for enhancement, just a trinket would be nice such as Meteorite Whetstone, Incisor Fragment or Sphere of Red Dragon's Blood. However, I've recently spotted Mark of Supremacy on the PTR and ... wow, for 25 Emblems of Triumph we get 128 hit rating and 1024 AP for 20 seconds? Pretty sweet. Roll on 3.2!

Shaman Q&A with Ghostcrawler

Thanks to Windfury for the heads up, the first in a series of Class Q&A has been posted... and its all about Shamans! Ghostcrawler and the development team answer some pretty interesting questions and throw up some interesting ideas.

For example they are looking at some way to "drop four totems on one global cooldown", which I would really like as currently I have a castsequence macro I have to mash to get all 4 down, taking 2 seconds and valuable DPS time.

One odd thing is a longer term change "removing the buff totems (replacing them with normal spells) and making all of the totems do something more active, like the current damage or healing totems." I mostly drop buff totems anyway (SoE, WF, Flametongue, even Mana Stream is logically equivalent to the Paladin mana buff) so more "active totems" would be interesting, although if I was buffing raid members using spells, would I need some mod like Pally Power to make it easier?

It also looks like Shamans should get more health in 3.2, they say "Nobody currently working on classes can remember why that decision (low base health) was initially made, so we plan to revert it for 3.2". I've found that running with Toughness in your build makes a really noticeable difference to the survivability in PvE, of course at the cost of DPS, so some free stamina would be most welcome. Especially for those damn whirlwind mobs!

Restos rejoice, they "think Restoration shamans are at the risk of running out of mana perhaps more than any other healer right now... This is a problem we plan on addressing". Not that I've seen any mana issues in my limited healing in Naxxramas 10, but that is hardly cutting edge stuff.

Lots more - go check it out!

Healing Heroic OHF... as enhancement

Thursday night, the Naxx raid is cancelled, and we are a-bored and looking for things to do. Someone asks to do Black Morass for their Alchemy specialization quest, so Kam jumps into the party. The group dimly recalls some irritating design from the past where you need to do Old Hillsbrad Foothills before BM, so it's off to OHF first. The party consists of a tankadin, 2 mages, warlock and Kam the enhancer. "Who will heal?" someone says... umm I guess Kam can throw some heals out I say, and so it begins. We did normal OHF and BM, during which hardly anyone needed healing anyway, so Kam was meleeing all the time. Healing Stream totem ftw! Then some mad man suggests we try heroic OHF... how hard can it be?

Kam carries a scrappy set of healing gear with him (to compare offspec raid loot against), so on it goes, and his spellpower goes from around 1000 to almost 2k. This is a good start. Then I switch to my healing bar... (the group have already pulled twice while I was trying to sort myself out), what spells do we have here...

Lesser Healing Wave. Nice and quick, this will get the mages out of a tight spot if they pull aggro. Except it seems to restore the tiniest chink of health. I guess thats Kam's lack of healing power and any resto talents whatsoever. Instead, let's try...

Healing Wave. This is more like it, a nice big heal on a ... umm 3 second cast. I had a faster heal when I was resto, but now HW is taking ages and if any DPS pull aggro, I have to use LHW as they are dead before this goes off. Still, its good for healing the tank, who isn't taking a lot of damage. Kam's lack of spell power means the heals only restore a small bit of health anyway. It's ok, if anyone else takes damage we always have...

Chain Heal. Without Improved Chain Heal, this thing was useful for topping up the ranged but of course the tank was standing too far away for it to bounce from tank to ranged, and I am the melee. Oh gods we've pulled 3 buildings at once! Mobs... everywhere, damage... all over the party. Chain heal for the... loss it turns out, curse Kam's lack of spell power in his melee/spell damage spec.

Of course, I had Earth Shield on the tank anyway so they... nope, Earth Shield is a talent in the resto tree. Riptide? Nope, resto talent. Kam had to resort to spamming Healing Wave and Lesser Healing Wave if the DPS got into trouble, and I managed to lose a Mage when he got aggro and Kam was being interrupted by bad mobs (I can haz no Healing Focus, see?).

Despite the basic Shaman healing spells being quite... basic, the group managed to successfully infiltrate the Castle and were well on their way to rescuing Thrall when my WoW client locked solid and stubbornly refused to let me log back in again. I would have got away with it, if it hadn't been for those pesky crashes.

Roll on 3.1 and dual specs I say, when I can get me a proper set of healing spells and throw some mean Riptide/Tidal Waves/Chain Heal action out.

Gearing up for some resto dual-spec action

Slowly and not surely the healing gear is starting to trickle in. A few nights ago Kam got the Facade Shield of Glyphs from Heroic Azjol-Nerub, which beats his old level 70 shield into the ground (baby). A lot of crit heavy spell damage gear has come Kam's way recently, the Legguards of Nature's Power from Culling of Stratholme (fantastic instance) was a particular highlight.

It used to be that resto needed MP5, Int and some more MP5, but now I'm reading that some crit and haste is beneficial, so Kam is collecting resto and elemental gear equally. Luckily, there are only three active shamans in the guild at the moment, so most mail spell power drops are going spare.

I would advise anyone of any class to get glyphs for your second spec right now. Many of the gold-making blogs are advising glyph sellers to stock up for the inevitable boom in demand when dual-specs appear, because a lot of people won't plan for it and will go off to the AH to buy their glyphs on patch day. This will inevitably mean that the prices will be very high as inscribers attempt to make a killing on the high demand.

I'm planning on getting Glyph of Chain Heal, Glyph of Lesser Healing Wave, Glyph of Water Mastery, Glyph of Water Shield, plus Glyph of Water Walking for fun. Kam already has Water Shield, but as I understand it, the second spec will start with an empty glyph tab.

Resto gear guides for Heroics and Naxxramas

Happy new year peoples. Now Kam is almost 80 I've started to look for big lists of Resto loot to go seek. Here is what I've found thus far.

Chain Heal Rises as Circle of Healing Falls has an interesting discussion about stats for haste and mp5 to shoot for (350-400 haste & 550 mp5 in combat).

This Healer Wrath rep post from World of Matticus has more to add to my old Shaman rep post. This one covers all healers, so is an interesting read to keep informed of what the other healing lot are after.

Mana Tide - To-do List for the Level 80 Resto Shaman is a nice list of specs, glyphs, reputation loot and BoE stuff.

Way Of The Totem: Rep rewards: Filling your gear gaps has more rep item discussion, but you can never get enough, right?

The Egg and I is a discussion of where to spend those badgers, erm I mean emblems, from Way Of The Totem.

Gear Choices Pt. I - Gearing up for Naxx is the list from Shields Up!

Healing With Hooves is a blog I've just discovered, but they have a good 3 part guide to Resto gear part 1 part 2 part 3.

Now all I need is similar lists for Enhancement and Elemental. Me, collect 3 sets of gear? Why I've not done that since... ok, since the end of TBC.

Shadow of Doom tanked by Earth Elemental

As part of the current zombie events, the scourge invasion is back. Floating necropolises are appearing all over the world and, keen to acquire a Tabard of the Argent Dawn, Kam headed into the Eastern Plaguelands to kill some scourge invaders.


Joining a pick up group, the initial attackers were repelled easily. However we had no tanks in the group, so when the Shadow of Doom spawned, Kam quickly summoned an Earth Elemental which proved hard enough to tank the Shadow of Doom, so long as earth shield and riptide were kept up on it.


Now to grind another 9 or so Necrotic Runes...

The Nerfed Karazhan

Thursday night Kam went into Karazhan as healer, with the intention of trying out a 0/0/61 spec, seeing how using a spell rotation as suggested by Jagerbombz would work.


Unfortunately Karazhan is now just plain easy. Before patch 3 we could get almost all the bosses killed in 3 lots of 3.5 hour runs, except maybe Nightbane, over a total of 10 and a half hours. Last night we killed everything except Nightbane, Illhoof and Maiden in 3 and a half hours. I mean really. We even killed the elite packs of party guests! Kam managed to grab the tier 4 gloves and helm and many badges.


An earth shield and riptide was all that was needed to keep the main tank up, and some chain heals to top the raid off. While I agree that Blizzard spending a lot of time balancing stuff at level 70 would be a waste of their time, it seems the only serious healing practise is to be had in Zul'Aman or some new instances come Wrath.

Did the horseman leave his melee ring in his tomb?

Another night, another run into the SM Graveyard in the hopes of getting a Sinister Squashling. Our group this time was a feral druid tank, rogue, another rogue and a protection paladin in DPS gear. As a sign of how non tricky this encounter is, all Kam needed to do was to put earth shield (not improved) onto the druid tank and drop the occasional riptide. Without a healing stream totem down - I suspect with one down Kam could have read the gravestones or maybe popped off into the SM library to read some books while the fight was going on.


On the first kill, the Squashling dropped, won by one of the rogues with a roll of 99! I rolled anyway but had little hope of besting 99, and sure enough I didn't. The rest of the time the Signet Ring and Witches Band dropped. Have they removed the melee ring? 13 kills and no sign of it at all.


Not to mention the Hallowed Helm which is the other item for the Hallows End achievement. I've never seen that drop. The Random Number Generator can be a cruel mistress sometimes.


Image courtesy of David Besa.

The Gutless Horseman

Today Hallow's End begins! Along with a massive number of achievements to gain for the probably-impossible title, there is the small matter of a non-combat pet, the Sinister Squashling, to obtain.


So the merry band of Kam, resto specced, 3 hunters and a resto druid headed into the SM Graveyard. Given we had no tanks interested, we had a tenacity pet tank the Horseman. This boar has 12,000 armour and was pretty good it has to be said, an Earth Shield and druid HoTs were all that was needed to keep him up.


Oddly each party member (but the one who had done it before) could summon the Horseman twice, so we got 8 cracks at it. A few items dropped including the Witches Band which made a nice healing upgrade, and finally the Squashling itself. Unfortunately Kam lost the roll, but at least it has dropped, so hopefully with more cracks at the Horseman there's a decent chance of getting it.


Things I learnt healing:

• Riptide. It's so nice to finally have a HoT!
  
• Mana usage. Mana usage was ok but I had to use Mana Tide Totem once per fight, and keep away from the Mana Pots because now you can only use one pot per fight.
  
• Overheals. Over healing was quite... large, due to dropping a Chain Heal on the pet when it had taken a little damage, the heal lands for 4k and so much of it is over healing. I am still in the mindset to heal early and often, which is a problem when your smallest heal lands for 2k or so!
  
• Rotations. I've still not figured out this healing spell rotation, although I was cancelling many of the heals in this fight so didn't get a chance to really test the new spells and talents out.
  
• Not much else, this fight is still ludicrously easy really.
  

They made me heal middle Karazhan!

What a bunch of ... anyway due to there only being 2 healers signed, Kam was set up to be healer for more Karazhan chaos. Under strict instructions not to skip Aran for Chess, we went into see Medivh's father.

• The Shade of Aran. The trash between the Menagerie and Aran's room hit really hard, particularly the Arcane Protectors, so much so that Kam was spamming lesser healing wave onto the tank and using his entire mana pool for each pull. I was totally not expecting that and got caught out on the first pull. Dead tank oops.
  
  The Aran fight itself was chaos; whoever was targeted by arcane missiles would take damage so quickly that only a lesser healing wave could save them. Often I would try to use a chain heal, but the cast time seemed too slow. After both us healers died, the time came for the DPS to step up and kill the old codger. Which they duly did.
  
• Chess. Without specific instructions not to do Chess, we did. Healing was erm... someone else took control of the healing piece so I had to DPS. The chest contained a nice pair of leggings which are a great upgrade over the PvP healing legs.
  

Rant on.
During all of the trash pulls and probably boss fights, the rogue would insist on standing right in front of the mob, swinging away at its face. Now enough people have already posted that this is a really bad thing, honestly everyone knows rogues do it from behind. Not only does standing in front affect your personal DPS, but the resulting parries make the mob hit faster. Hit the tank faster. The tank who I am trying to keep alive. So please for the sake of the Earthmother, DPS behind the mob.
Rant off.


Perhaps I've discovered why the tank was taking so much damage from Arcane Protectors?

Healing in lower Karazhan

With jagerbombz and Anna's sage words of wisdom ringing in my ears, Kam stepped into Karazhan as healer for the first time. Oh gods.


Luckily Kam was paired with a fairly uber resto druid and had at least seen the fights before, so I knew what to expect. Still, it was a nerve-racking experience.

• Attumen. The approach to Attumen was fine and the fight itself was very straightforward. Kam was assigned to heal the Off Tank and during the mounted phase did pretty much nothing except cancel heals.
  
• Moroes. The trash before Moroes was interesting; the packs required spotting which AOE-capable DPSer would be pulling the threat and tanking (hint: Boomkin), then earthshielding them and keeping up a mixture of healing wave, lesser healing wave when they took lots of damage, and chain heal when others needed a top up. Crazy boomkins.
  
  
  The Moroes fight itself was the stuff of my nightmares - the garrottes do 360 damage per second so frantic chain healing and lesser healing wave was needed to keep everyone alive. The off tank was garrotted but didn't call it out, so he suddenly died. Luckily Moroes was almost dead and was swiftly killed.
  
• Opera: Big Bad Wolf. The trash up to Opera was again fine, the Boomkin had an earth shield and Kam's full attention for the packs. The Wolf fight itself was fairly straightforward - following the guides above Little Red Riding Hood got an earth shield and lesser healing wave spammed onto them. Generally they survived too, which is always nice (sorry Honeydew).
  
• Curator. The approach to Curator was not smooth, more like mildly lumpy. The raid was unable to cope with 3 of the Ghastly Haunts by the back door - a single Haunt does a load of damage, never mind 3. We were also unable to cope with 2 packs of arcane creatures in the Menagerie at once. As you can tell, there was much ninja pulling.
  
  
  The ninja pulling included the Curator himself, who attacked a player who strayed too close, causing us to hastily form a U shape and Ablaze the mage to sling on what arcane resistance gear he could to soak. Healing on the Curator was very mana intensive - DPSers were taking damage from sparks and the melee who were chasing them took the brunt of it. Luckily chain heal is an awesome spell and with druid HoTs on everyone we managed to kill Curator.
  
• Maiden. After the heart-attack that was Curator, the raid moved onto an easier target, most illegally it turns out. Somewhere in our long forgotten raid forum lies a post describing how Maiden is to be left for the second or third raid night, but we erm forgot about that.
  
  
  The trash up to Maiden only became tricky when the Phantom Guardsmen summoned two Phantom Hounds which promptly attacked the healers. Kam still uses a shield so he has a decent amount of armour and can tank a hound for a while, our resto tree druid isn't so lucky and is quite squishie; I had to be alert for her taking damage and be ready with the lesser healing wave to help out.
  
  
  The Maiden fight itself proved tricky; during the Repentance stun we had an earth shield and druid HoT on the tank, but it was not enough to keep him alive, so a few wipes resulted. Eventually we got the tank to drag maiden over to us to break us out of repentance so we could carry on healing and the Maiden was killed.
  

The loots were the Dragon-Quake Shoulderguards, an improvement over Kam's old PvP shoulders, plus some loot no one wanted for off spec. Healing Karazhan is scary!

Brewfest Ram raiding

After hanging around until the Tuesday raid finished, Kam managed to scam a group together to go try Coren Direbrew again. This time we had a druid tank, hunter, melee combat specialist and feral druid. The fight went far quicker than before and Kam only died once, right at the end when he got swamped by adds. The melee DPS were dodging the whirlwind well, so they didn't require a lot of healing.


Coren dropped his lucky coin and, as the only shield user in the party, Kam got it... for off, off really off-spec. The kodo didn't make an appearance but but the Swift Brewfest Ram did drop and Kam won the roll, hurrah!


With the ram safely in the bag, as it were, all that remains for this year's beer fest is to grind more tokens for clothing, given Kam became a member of the Brew of the Month club. Then hopefully next year the title can be secured.


The ram still doesn't fit under the bleeding elevator door in the Undercity however.

Healing through Coren Direbrew

Finally on Sunday Kam managed to get into a group to go do the new Brewfest boss in the Blackrock Depths bar. The group consisted of a Warrior tank with a Mage, Rogue and Warlock for DPS. Kam had the quest to save brewfest and after insulting Coren Direbrew, the fight started.


Initially Coren starts with 3 non elite friends, he summons more throughout the fight who appear in mole machines which will do a knock back if you are standing on the spot; cancelling a heal. He also does a whirlwind attack which hits people in melee range. He then summons a barmaid at 66% and 33% health, who sometimes throw kegs into the inventory of random players; if the kegs aren't drunk then the player is stunned for 5 seconds. The barmaids will also CC a player for 6 seconds!


I knew none of this, so was quite unprepared for the chaos that followed as the DPS tried to keep the adds down, kill the barmaids and kill off Coren. However I spend most of my time watching the Grid UI anyway. Things I learnt:

• The whirlwind does a load of damage. At several points, the rogue would lose around 75% of his health from a whirlwind, requiring an emergency heal. From what I've read, this is avoidable, so please avoid!
  
• There is a lot of group damage. This required pretty much back-to-back chain heals, putting a serious strain on Kam's mana.
  
• Mana Pot and Mana Tide early. Due to the heavy casting of spells, Kam needed loads of mana and so I had to use a mana potion very early so a second one would be available toward the end of the fight. Mana tide totem was also needed.
  
• Keep an eye on Water Shield. Again the mole machines or dark iron adds would sometimes get a hit or two on Kam - resulting in Water Shield charges being used. I had to keep a close eye on Water Shield as it kept on disappearing.
  
• Use Mana Spring Totem. I tried one fight using Healing Stream Totem. It did not go well; mana usage is high as everyone is taking damage and Healing Stream just can't keep up. I stuck with Mana Spring after that and things went a lot better.
  

The results of this little foray into BRD were a nice Beer maiden, a tasty Melee DPS trinket for off-spec, plus the healing trinket which I had hoped to get. The Brewfest Kodo also dropped, but Kam lost the roll. There is always another day though. The fight itself was pretty neat and it was really good to see the inside of Blackrock Depths again after so much time.

Back to Resto

Due to a combination of suspecting Brewfest PUGs might need a healer and switching my raiding night to the early Karazhan night, Kam found himself hanging outside Thrall's throne room, respeccing back to Resto. He is once again 8/0/53 because it worked so well last time.

Now armed with a couple of tasty raid epics no one else wanted, Kam's healing is over 1200 with 150+ mp5. Hopefully I can get in on an entry level Karazhan raid soon to try out some raid healing, as well as healing up some BRD bar action.

On the Brewfest front Kam now has 113 tokens so he is back on track to join the Brew of the Month club before Brewfest ends next friday night.

Ring of Blood and Gorefiend

As I've mentioned, the raid on Thursday was cancelled with a lot of notice. So because we had a fair amount of raiders hanging around, we hit the Ring Of Blood quests. This was mainly for gold; each quest paid almost 11 gold, but I also had my eye on the Mag'hari Fury Brand to add to my Enhancement set.

Total chaos is all I can say; total and utter chaos. There were 2 other groups at the ring trying to do their quests. I was in a group with a Bear tank, hunter, dps warrior and ret paladin. If you've not done this quest line, it's a lot of fun. You rock up to Gurgthock the goblin, who stands next to the ring, and accept a quest to fight a certain boss; this triggers the boss to appear in the ring and off you go. Once you kill the boss, you hand in to the troll standing next to the goblin, then you're ready to talk to Gurgthock again to fight the next boss. If someone else is fighting the boss you can't talk to Gurgthock. Once you can talk to him... its a bun fight to be the first so you get a crack at a boss.

So each tank from 3 groups would try to talk to Gurgthock first to get their boss in the ring; when the boss appeared he'd find himself being attacked by all 3 groups, and we'd have random by standing Ogres to deal with too. When I was too slow with handing in the quest, a member of my party would start the next boss before I was on that part, so I didn't get credit and we'd have to do it all again. Total chaos. The hunter would also periodically pull aggro and then have to feign death; sometimes he would get away with it and sometimes he would get hit and would need a heal. Hunters - if you have a threat meter, feign death before you pull aggro!

Eventually we prevailed and the offhand was mine. Looking to cause more trouble in Outlands, we hopped on over to Shadowmoon Valley to help out an Ancient Shadowmoon Spirit divine the location of one Teron Gorefiend. The mission: recover Gorefiend's armour. The method: kill Vhel'kur. The madness: Rather than wear my Spectrecles, I kept my healing helm on instead so I couldn't see the dragon attacking anyone. Luckily I could still heal and even more luckily once we'd finished him off I could equip the Spectrecles and then loot the corpse. Unfortunately because I couldn't see Vhel'kur's health, I popped Bloodlust just as he died. Oops. I learnt in this fight that Earth Shielding a mad mage who is bound to pull aggro is a very good idea indeed. Once I'd handed in the quest and made a colossal mistake (damn you Gorefiend!), I was left with some helm choices. I'll probably take the Shamanistic Helmet of Second Sight because I've somehow signed up to Karazhan as DPS so I'll be needing some socketed items to put spell hit gems in. The Spectracles quest line is a really fun one, full of some cool lore. It's just a pity I won't be able to kill Gorefiend, but Chief Apothecary Hildagard did say "Should you ever find Teron Gorefiend". Gorefiend's exact wareabouts are unknown to me, I suspect he is in the Black Temple but I'm not going to verify that any time soon.

I am finding that having the ability to heal groups for 5 mans and quests is very useful; we can put together a group if a tank is around because there are usually a lot of DPSers online, and therefore I can get all those annoying group quests done without too much trouble.

Don't stand next to the trap

I've often heard our healers saying "Don't stand next to the trap" or bemoaning other healers who are often to be found standing next to a shackled or trapped target. So I thought I'd find out why and post here.

The executive summary is: standing next to a CCed target makes it more likely it will attack you when the CC breaks, rather than going for the CCer.

Lume the Mad has a good post introducing the concepts of Threat and Aggro which I recommend reading. It is useful to know about threat to understand the following!

So Lume says if you are standing in melee range of a mob, you must exceed 110% of the threat the mob's target has to pull aggro, at which point the mob will come for you. If you are outside melee range, its 130% threat. From Wowwiki, melee range is 5 yards or closer.

Consider the case of a hunter chain trapping a mob. They will lay a trap and try to get threat on their mob, so it runs straight for them and into the trap. The mob will get trapped and will have to stand still and think about their actions. At this point no one is damaging the mob, so who is gaining threat on the mob?

Generally it's the healer. The mob is annoyed with the tank so every time the tank gets a heal, the mob becomes a little more annoyed with the healer - the healer is gaining threat on the trapped mob. When the mob breaks free from the trap, the healer has gained extra threat on the mob from when it went in. The trapper on the other hand usually has gained no extra threat on the mob at all (unless they have been drinking potions or healing themselves).

When the mob breaks out of the trap, if the healer has 111% of the trapper's threat one of two things can happen. If the healer is standing out of melee range of the mob, the mob will still go after the trapper, because the healer needs 130% threat to pull aggro. If the healer is standing inside melee range... the mob will go after the healer, because when in melee range, the healer only needs 110% threat to pull aggro. Melee range being next to the trap.

So I think that's why its a bad thing to stand next to a trapped or shackled mob and merrily heal away. I could be wrong of course ;)

Karazhan key fragments number 2 and 3

Last night I got a group together specifically to grab the Second and Third Karazhan key fragments. Our little group of adventurers was Feral Druid tank, 2 mages and a boomkin, with myself Resto shaman extraordinaire healing. Healing a proper level 70 instance. Oh deary me.

The Arcatraz

This went well apart from when we chose to tackle Zereketh the Unbound. This nasty puts void circles underneath you, which if you don't spot them you take lots of damage and generally die. Spotting these void circles when I was staring intently at Grid was quite difficult. However when the tank backed into a small alcove on the left hand wall, he went out of line of sight. This meant I had to run forward into range of the nasty Shadow Nova... which promptly knocked me back before my heal had finished casting. Result, dead tank very shortly followed by dead healer when he spotted a void circle too late. The boomkin died at the beginning to a void circle anyway, but luckily our two mages were on the ball and finished Zereketh off. Who promptly dropped plate loot anyway. Grrr. I had Zereketh as my focus so I could tell when to pop Bloodlust, but in the heat of the battle I totally forgot.

The key fragment was easy to get after that and we wisely decided not to try to finish the instance and instead head on over to all druids' favourite instance, the Steamvault.

The Steamvault

Ah the Steamvault, SV, place of many many Cenarion Expedition rep runs so Druid B could get his Earthwarden. We have a saying in our guild now - "No more Steamvaults". Sometimes though you have to make an exception.

The run went well, clearing a couple of Bog Lords with the greatest of ease. The only sticky point was when the tank pulled an Ice Elemental pack and a group of Naga. Despite the best efforts of our AOEers, we didn't survive that one. Finally the last key fragment was mine and... we had a crack at the nearby boss, Hydromancer Thespia. I was dreading this after what happened in The Arcatraz, but oddly enough one Nature Resistance Totem and some serious elemental nuking later, she was dead. I even managed to pop Bloodlust at the end this time.

It now occurs to me that because the two mages had to nuke the elementals quick, it would have been more useful for me to pop Bloodlust at the beginning of the fight.

The Black Morass awaits

Kam is now ready for The Black Morass, from the point of view of the Karazhan key chain. Whether he is ready healer-wise, only an attempt on the Black Morass will tell.

Sethekk Halls solo healing

Last night was Zul'Aman night in the guild, so I was grinding more Shattered Sun Offensive rep when a call for Sethekk Halls went out. As I've never done Sethekk I replied and found myself the only healer, in a group of a Feral druid tank, Mage, Enhancement Shaman and Hunter.

The run went pretty smoothly, perhaps due to the low level of the instance and the fact that most of the party were level 70. Stuff I learned was:

• The ghost summoned from the Sethekk Prophet's death hits very hard. So much so that it seems only a Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave can save their target. I initially tried a normal HW but the monkey getting hit died before the heal landed. So second time I tried a LHW and the same happened. Of course the true fix for this is to run away from the slow moving ghost, but it was frustrating when the Enhancement Shaman died 3 times in a row to 3 different ghosts and I couldn't save him. Maybe I shouldn't have tried.
  
• The Cobalt Serpent, a big blue wind serpent type thing, does a wing buffet which throws you back, cancelling any heals. Also, the Sethekk Oracles do a Chain Lightning which has a silence effect. So I had Earth Shield up on the tank all the time, refreshing during combat, because I didn't know when I would get silenced or interrupted.
  
• I need something to tell me when Water Shield has been removed. I was taking a fair amount of damage from the Chain Lightning and various other effects, and each tick takes a WS charge. Several combats ended with me noticing that I no longer had my lovely Water Shield.
  

Onto the bosses:

• Darkweaver Syth. This guy was a tank and spank apart from that he summons 4 elementals at various health levels. I used the Fire Elemental at the start to help with killing the adds and generally because we were all grouped together I could use Chain Heal to keep the party topped off.
  
• Talon King Ikiss. Despite being told I needed arcane resistance gear for this final boss in Sethekk, the tactic we actually used was to hide around the back of a pillar when he casts his AOE arcane explosion. There is a nice clear raid warning issued, and the whole party runs away round the back of a pillar, so its very clear when I need to follow. After the explosion he also does 1-2k of damage to the whole party, but this can easily be fixed by Chain Healing once to get 2 or 3 party members and then a second time to fix up anyone who wasn't touched. I kept Earth Shield up on the tank all the time and we killed him quite easily.
  
• There aren't any more bosses, despite only killing two! I was wondering where the rest of the instance had gone.
  

Because we had a hunter in the party, he was trapping various mobs, so I had to be careful not to stand next to the trap. More on that later when I can dig out the relevant facts as to why this is a Bad Thing.

Overall the run was good fun and I got to practise a few things. No loot this time from drops, and the reward I chose for the quest Brother Against Brother was an upgrade for my elemental set. I do now have the Shadow Labyrinth Key and have already been recruited to help with an SL run for the first Karazhan key fragment.

Midsummer's questing and Ice Lording

Today the Midsummer event starts, so lured in with the promise of free epics I went along with a guild group to see Lord Ahune. The rest of this post contains spoilers so beware!

Firstly I picked up a quest from Orgrimmar outside Thrall's hall - apparently the Twilight Hammer are up to no good again so off to the Zoram Strand to investigate some Unusual Activity I went.

When I got there the missive I looted from a corpse indicated something was up, so I has to go spy on some mysterious guests using an Innocent Disguise - the disguise is awesome because you turn into a Crab!

As a crab I pottered up the beach to discover that the Twilight Hammer is plotting to release a Frost Lord to fight the Fire Lord and take over in the resulting chaos. Back to Orgrimmar to report my findings, the elder I spoke to there was shocked and I was immediately dispatched to Coilfang Slave Pens to report for duty.

My group in Slave Pens was a Hunter, 2 Feral Druids, 1 Tankadin and myself. We were charged with summoning the Ice Lord Ahune ourselves and killing him. After thawing the big ice cube Lord Ahune appears in a spectacular style and proceeds to send waves of ice elemental at us.

This fight was not easy at all, certainly far harder than the Headless Horseman from Halloween. The waves of adds came with an elite ice elemental which had to be tanked and did a stacking debuff on the druid tank which made him harder to heal. The small non-elite ice elemental adds were rounded up by the paladin and DPSed down by the feral druid, while the hunter DPSed the elite. Periodically frost crystals would form at my feet and seconds later turn into a giant spike of ice which sent me shooting up into the air, interrupting heals. The non-elites also randomly frostbolted party members, so the damage taken was all over the party. I kept Earth Shield up on the tankadin and healed the druid tank and everyone else with a mix of Chain Heal and Healing Wave. Worse the frostbolts kept on removing my Water Shield so I had to keep an eye on that.

With the first phase over the Ice Lord's crystal became attackable so 25% of its health was taken down before the waves of adds started all over again. During this time I had ran out of mana, so received Innervates, potted or dropped a Mana Tide Totem. Frost resistance totem and/or Paladin frost resistance aura would help immensely during this fight, if only either of us had remembered to use them.

Finally after a couple of wipes we got him down (on phase 5 I kid you not), and a chest spawned with a quest item and 1 epic cloak. It was a fun fight and quite hard for our group which lacked AOE damage. Definitely not wellfare epics for us.

Unfortunately the healing cloak didn't drop but I did get a DPS caster cloak, the Cloak of Frigid Winds. Definitely the most challenging healing of my career thus far.

Shattered Halls solo healing

Our main tankadin is currently grinding Thrallmar reputation with a view to getting the subtlety cloak enchant. So last night I went on a Shattered Halls normal run as main healer; our group was Tankadin, Enhancement Shaman, Warlock, Holy Priest dpsing and me. Very little crowd control but who needs it with a tankadin?

Generally things went well; I put Earth Shield on the tankadin before a pull, kept an eye on the shaman and only needed to heal the tank when ES wore off. Again Chain heal came in very useful - when the shaman took damage I could CH him and it would bounce to the tankadin and heal her up too. A couple of times we managed to pull an extra group of 6; once we died when we pulled yet another group of 6, once we survived when we kept them under control and burned them down. Mana Tide totem certainly came in handy there. Again the emergency healing macro I got from Elitist Jerks came in useful to save the lunatic enhancement shaman - you're not a tank you know!

Bosses:

• Grand Warlock Nethekurse. Pretty easy, he deathcoiled me twice but I was keeping Earth Shield up on the tank so no healing was lost. Probably best to have a Tremor Totem down for this one. At 20% he goes nuts and starts shadowbolting and does big damage to the melee, so I had to start chain casting chain heals onto the tank until they got out of his range, then quickly Lesser Healing Waved anyone who took damage. I put a Searing Totem down to do a bit of DPS.
  
• Warbringer O'mrogg. He does an AOE fear so I had a Tremor Totem down to catch it. Again I kept Earth Shield on the tank - because the healing from ES is attributed to the healee, the tank actually gets more threat from ES, so when O'mrogg does his aggro reset he generally tended to stick on the tank. Again a Searing Totem was my guilty contribution to DPS.
  
• Warchief Kargath Bladefist. Amusingly because we had a tankadin she tanked both Kargath and his adds, so I kept ES up on her all the time, stuck down a Fire Elemental and went to hide in a corner. The melee needed healing because of the adds; Chain Heal is great for this. When he did his blade dance most party members took damage so needed a heal or two. This time the enhancement shaman and I coordinated our bloodlusts so we had around 60 seconds of it before Kargath died. One tip I learnt is to recall any totems before running up the steps to start the encounter; if there are totems in the corridor they will aggro the assassins who spawn at the bottom of the stairs. Not good.
  

A pretty good run, only one death and one wipe, I completed The Will of the Warchief and got a very nice cloak upgrade as a reward. Plus yet more Enhancement gear no one else wanted.