Raiding 101

[KiloVictor]

For raiding, I'm either going to have to respec Aleri to boost my mana pool and efficiency (which I really would rather avoid since then I wouldn't actually be playing Aleri, I'd just be playing a straight up heal bot) or get more gear to increase my mana pool.
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Not that it's news, but gear's your solution. My priest is a shadow-spec that does just fine as a raid healer with 10 points in Holy. I attribute that entirely to equipment -- in raiding gear with buffs, I'm running about 6,600 mana and just over 400 spirit. I don't run out of mana nearly as much as I used to.

Our guild went at it fairly methodically: we mapped out the places we needed to hit for the various set items, and we started farming the instances. "Farming" in the sense that we ran them again and again, not farming in the mind-numbingly boring sense of grinding mobs for cash. Instance runs are fun, they're a great way to practice your teamwork, and in a raid format, a good chance to practice with new tools and tactics (CTRaid being the biggest change) which you'll need later.

Our rotation was LBRS for UBRS keys, Strat and Scholo for boss drops (heads from Gandling, legs from Rivendare, all sorts of goodies in between), and UBRS for Onyxia keys and set chest pieces. Pretty much all our guild has their class set now, except a few harder-to-get bits.

One thing that I noticed was the progression of the group. We went from having an embarassingly hard time with 15 people (yes, 15!) in Strat to mowing confidently through in much smaller groups. I attribute this to two things: improved team play, and improved gear. It really does make that much of a difference to upgrade to the level 60 items.

The other thing is that with CTRaid you're going to play differently, especially as a healer. Limitations of being grouped in the same 5-player party go away when you can see the health of the entire raid group, so you can start structuring your groups more effectively to take advantage of group effect spells and start experimenting with different group tactics.

There are those that will object to overpowering your way through 5-man instances, and it's not usually my thing either. It can get a bit boring after a while, but completing a set or getting that perfect item drop can go a long way in keeping me happy. Plus you can start to make up new games to keep things interesting... say racing to certain bosses against the clock, running two raids in parallel as a race, or maybe putting together the most offbeat group you can imagine (perhaps only pet classes and one healer?) for each run. And by rotating through the various instances, you can keep it a bit more fresh and entertaining.

Life at 60 does start to focus on gear upgrades, for better or worse. ;)

Good luck in getting them!

Kv