Feeling Heroic

Tuesday night, we decided we'd try Heroic Mode: Shannox with our 25man raid team.  It was an interesting night, to say the least.  We were short on healers (main spec, raid rank healers), which made learning the fight in heroic mode that much harder.  We tried a few times, then went on to cheese mode a few bosses.

Cheese Mode - Refers to just walking up and owning a boss because we either out-gear the encounter or we're just so used to the fight that it's not even really a challenge by now.  We cheesed Beth'tilac, Rhyolith, and Alysrazor on Tuesday, if I remember correctly.  

At any rate, last night we went in to try our luck again versus Heroic: Shannox. Our raid leader concocted a new strategy which we definitely saw progress with.  It only took a few unlucky wipes but we made a little more progress each time.


And then...our last attempt...We had Shannox down to only about 12 million health (out of 97 Million) and our main tank went down.  We battle rezzed him, but one of the key components of that fight is that Shannox and his two dogs are taunt-immune, meaning if you are a tank and you need to regain threat on the boss...you need to do so with actual attacks.  You can't just taunt him and get back to #1 on his threat table.


Things got seriously messy after the Shannox tank died.  Shannox was running around obliterating raid members, the dogs were still both active...It seems like our dps just went full throttle on Shannox though because he died pretty quickly after our Main Tank went down.  It...was...AWESOME!


He dropped the heroic tier 12 pants, but considering I got the healing mace from Ragnaros just the other night, I'm content passing on upgrades for other raid members.  Hopefully we'll be taking down even more raid bosses on heroic, so I'm sure something will drop eventually that no one will need and I can roll at that point.  One thing that you should really understand about me, as a player, is that one thing I rarely ever worry about is winning new gear.  Yes, I know that I need to continue upgrading my gear in order to keep up with raid progression, but I am generally content just being able to be a part of the fun.


I was pretty excited to see us win that fight.  I guess it's just really cool to know that we're still making progress...although...Monday night, it's back to Ragnaros......grumble.


Last night was also a "test run" for some gear changes and spec changes for me, and I think it went well.  My overall healing output seemed to be better than the previous night and I wasn't wasting points in haste that weren't doing anything for me really.


I didn't really upgrade any gear, but I swapped out these two pieces of gear for the t12 chest and gloves:  

The t12 gear seems to be working out fine, and now I'm at 3 pieces of t12.  I still have an ilvl 359 helm, which I'm hoping to replace soon.  The 4 set bonus for Resto druids seems decent enough to try for.  We shall see.


So, the gear changes I made were pretty boring, right?  Nothing major.  The spec changes I made last night were actually pretty minor too, but I definitely saw a noticeable jump in my rank on the healing meter.


My original resto spec was this:

Part of the reason I used this spec was because I needed all the spell cost reduction help I could get as a newly reborn resto druid in Cataclysm.  I say "newly reborn" because, as I'm sure so many of you know - all classes had a major overhaul just prior to Cata's release that changed how we functioned and how much our spells cost us.  I found, as I ventured out into my first few heroics...that I was really having some serious mana issues.  I figured Living Seed was basically a free heal, as it's not something I'd have to cast and the cost reduction I got from Moonglow (3/3) definitely helped.


Here is a look at the new spec I tried out last night:

Sorry if the images came out a little fuzzy.  This website and I seem to be having some trouble getting on the same page as of late.  Basically, I dropped living seed completely, put a point in Nature's Bounty (because I had to), then instead of 3/3 Moonglow, I only put two points there for spell cost redux and picked up 3/3 Genesis for more healing power.


I should have changed this a long time ago, but I never really thought much about how much of an increase in healing it could potentially give me. I think I'm going to check over some of my alts' specs now too, just to see if improvements can be made.  My shaman's resto spec should be fine now, as I just changed it to pick up Spirit Link Totem, which is incredibly helpful for Majordomo Staghelm's Scorpion Phase Flamescythes.  


I guess that's all I really have.  I reforged, gemmed and enchanted my new gear better so I'm at 2014 haste (only 9 points too high) instead of 2101 (96 points too high).  That seems to help too.  I'm trying to decide if I want to reforge some crit into mastery or just leave it alone.  I might switch it for Monday night's Ragnaros fight to see how it works out, but I'm not sure yet.


As always, if you have any questions - game related or totally off topic - feel free to send me an email at mydruidrocks@aol.com or post them in the comment section below.


Take care all!