sharing my toys

Super quick n' snarky post responding to news, is all.

Hurray for shaman buffs! Any buffs to healers is a buff to the team!

And who in the world could have guessed they would revert the LoD nerf?! I am afraid to even mention it, thinking that one day I'm going to log in and it will be un-reverted. Also afraid of subsequent whack-a-mole nerfs, since obviously they still feel we're too good in some way.

The PotI nerf hurts for Chimereaon. I felt so fail last night since I couldn't even keep my group up. They really should keep it the same healing but only make it cost 2 talent points. It's pretty useless as is.

Am I the only one who read:

We agree with the sentiment among some players that Restoration druids and Restoration shaman are lacking in the healing cooldown department. The shaman buff and Power Word: Shield adjustment above should bring all healers reasonably close in terms of throughput. The decision on who to bring then might end up being dictated by the strong cooldowns offered by paladins or priests. This isn’t the kind of thing we can address via a hotfix, but it is something we are looking at for the next major content patch.

and heard: 'We're going to nerf paladins!'?

Really, I hope that druids and shamans get some more cooldowns to play with, I really do, special abilities are fun to use and offer more depth in play. But the cynic in me is bracing up for some bad news for the holy folks instead of good news for resto...

(I did try to warn you that this was a snarky post ><)

i'm a crit monster

Here's a crit I did of myself for our second Atramedes kill. I actually wrote this up last week but since we didn't raid last night I haven't had much new to talk about.

Well, like every other 25 man raiding guild on the internet, we are recruiting. We need healers who can make it at least 3 (of 4) nights a week. Why choose FL over all the others in the world? There! Are! Four! Lights!

Check out this Star Trek Cookie Jar.

I am starting healer evaluations this week so I did this one as an example (though I promised that good things would show up on other evals, since this was my own I didn't feel the need to pat myself on the back or anything). And even then it was weird addressing myself as you. But hey.


Survivability
Died early in the fight to too much sound. Yeah, someone dragged something bad through the raid and it wasn't technically "your fault", but you could have tried harder to avoid it. In a personal responsibility fight such as this one, everyone is accountable for their own actions and that does mean that CYA is your first and utmost priority.

Damage Taken
#7 on damage taken. Other than the incident mentioned above, you're taking comparable damage to the other raid members. Specific to Atramedes, you gained 80 sound from air phase bombs and and 35 sound from discs. There's definite room for improvement, there.

Buff Uptime
I look for 100% uptime on buffs like Beacon of Light, Judgements of the Pure, and Auras. Save the moments while you were dead, you had that, though you probably could have judged and started healing sooner after taking the brez. You have 90-some % active time, so you're staying busy when you're alive.

Cooldown Management
For the first half of the fight, it looks like you ignored your cooldowns. The air phase is a great time to use Divine Plea, from the looks of the Damage Taken log above, so instead of two uses, you potentially had time for four. The JC Owl trinket has no drawback to using, and can be used on cooldown. I would recommend trying to push for five uses on a fight this long.

For Aura Mastery, Divine Favor, Avenging Wrath, and Ho-Sac: The same thing as above. Ho-Sac is pretty situational since there's no gib-protection, but Avenging Wrath and Aura Mastery on a 2 minute cooldown. That's at least 4 if not 5 uses on a fight like this, and with times of predictable, raid-wide AoE damage, there are opportunities to use these more often.

For the banana man (Guardian of Ancient Kings), well, you haven't used this in a week now. Please look for opportunities to summon your helper. It may not be a ton of healing, but it's cheap healing. I don't see a LoH for this fight either, which is 10% mana as well as a big heal on the tank. That's something you've dedicated glyph spots so that it's available for every attempt.

Spell Selection
Divine Light is a great tank healing spell. With 21% overheal, you could probably weave in a few other types of heals to save some mana when a DL isn't entirely necessary, but there were no tank deaths and you didn't run OOM. I see a few more places where you could really help out with raid healing using Holy Radiance. Mathematically, you can run higher than 50% overheal on Radiance and it is still a "cheap" spell.
For Holy Shock, for a fight as long as this one, you had the potential to cast 81 times. In actual, you cast 50 shocks, which means you lost out on upwards of 30 holy power. You generated 69 holy power in the fight, so this is a non-trivial amount you're missing out on. Your LoDs have fairly low overheal, so not only is it a free heal, it's an effective one. LoD also transfers to the Beacon tank so it's a very safe heal to use while still keeping your tank in mind.

Mana Usage
You judged approximately once every 28 seconds, or 36 times. For a fight this long, you had a potential of 61 judges. While I don't see any other holy paladins in WoL judging on cooldown, I do see them averaging closer to 4 a minute, instead of 2 a minute. I think 4/minute is a good target.
Your holy lights are averaging 50% overheal. If there isn't much damage to heal, I would look to judge or use holy shock instead (see below, assignment survivability).

Encounter Awareness
This is a hard thing to evaluate objectively. In the wipes for this fight we had last night, you did a lot better at flexing your encounter knowledge. This kill is the "worst" snapshot for your sound gain and survivability, but this just reinforces the importance of being consistent and persistent.

Communication
There are times when you are unable to heal the tank, or you died, or silenced, and you didn't call it out over mumble. There are times you did. But there are more times you didn't. When we don't communicate with each other, players often assume the worst when things go south. If we are communicating, we as a team have an opportunity to salvage a wipe, and our fellow raiders are less likely to be frustrated when they understand what's happening to us.

Please remember to sign up for raids!

Assignment survivability
Your assignment ("the tank") didn't die in hardly any of the Atramedes attempts, but you could have pushed Beacon of Light a bit harder since there were three healers assigned to the tank and spot healed the raid more. In a one-tank fight, BoL is often more healing done a healadin's direct heals. Almost half of your Divine Light casts went straight to the tank which generated holy power, but had you casted more shocks and spread those DLs through the raid, you could have ended up with the same holy power and more healing done on the raid through Beacon transfer.

Summary
Focus on managing your cooldowns, using them earlier in the fight. Squeeze in judgements and holy shocks whenever you can, again, earlier and therefore more often. Be more willing to talk in mumble when something is going to keep you from your assignment.

(Now that I've terrified my healing team...)