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+--- Thread: So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in (/thread-6408.html)
So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in - Icebird - 05-09-2005
Sometimes in World of Warcraft you have battles that are too memorable not to share. I'm still kicking myself for not taking a video of some of the fights we had in Blackfathom Deeps yesterday.
Drake's priest and his dad's warlock were looking to complete some quests in Blackfathom Deeps, and were looking for help. I volunteered the services of my priest Tidecaller (level 33). Drake and his dad were already partied up with a warlock, and Kedj's warlock also needed to complete quests there so he joined the party as well.
So you have our party: 2 priests, 3 warlocks. Blackfathom Deeps is one of the more warlock friendly instances, but you can never find one to join a group in Ashenvale since the only people questing there are usually Night Elves. Apart from Tidecaller, all the members of the party were between 25 and 27.
The first half of the instance went fairly smoothly. We used void walkers to tank and they were pretty durable with Renew on them. Then Drake's dad had to leave just as we were hitting the Moonshrine ruins.
This is where the Deeps gets tough because you start facing linked groups of 3 or 4.
In order to compensate for our lack of tanks I started doing Mind Control pulls, with Drake's priest taking over as primary healer. In some battles it worked incredibly well. In other battles it broke early, or I pushed "1" to attack instead of using the icon on the petbar. But we were doing okay for the first part - waiting for patrols, and keeping the adds to the minimum.
Then we turned the corner on "T" and headed up the stairs. I think a 2 creature group was ahead of us. I mind controlled one and used him to attack the other. Then naturally I hit "1" by mistake again and the control broke. That wouldn't have been so bad, but suddenly a runner got away from us, and returned with a group we had previously left.
Suddenly we're battling what must be at least 5 mobs with two void walkers, two squishy warlocks, and two priests to keep everyone alive.
What followed was one of the craziest battles I've ever been in. Everyone was attacking different mobs. Everyone was *getting* attacked by different mobs. First it was Renews. Then Flash Heals. Then Shields followed by Flash Heals. To keep track of other party member's pets you have to hover or click on them - they don't show up in the party display. So that was another complication.
The battle is stretching on, the mana is draining fast, and I'm desperately trying to keep everyone alive long enough to stabalize the battle. When I see the mobs getting low on health I have to break healbot mode to use a Mind Blast or Mind Flay to kill them before they can run away.
There goes "Desperate Prayer" my once-every-half-hour zero-mana-cost instant-cast 500 health self-heal.
There goes the mana potion.
By this stage I'm casting "Prayer of Healing" (the priests' group heal spell) and counting the seconds of its 3 second cast time (longer with attack interuptions), and crossing my fingers that it will finish casting before I die. There were at least 2 or 3 of those moments.
By now I am completely out of mana, and the health is dropping rapidly through the red zone. I'm bashing the Twilight Hammer guy in front of me with my staff knowing that I have used every trick in my book, and I am completely out of options. Dying so I can use a Soulstone rez is looking like a very attractive option since I know I'd come back with more health and some mana.
And then Drake manages to hit me with a Flash Heal.
I'm still out of mana, but my life bar is a health green and suddenly there are only two mobs left. I keep bashing my guy with my staff while the others finish off their mob and help me with mine.
We have killed them all. And everyone lived.
As if that wasn't enough we had a similar battle a couple of minutes later when Kedg fell in the water and got aggroed by another group of 4 or so. He died before we could reach him, so we suddenly had another barely controlled 3 on 4 battle. With another healthy dose of cross healing we managed to win the battle and rez Kedj.
A little bit later, Ketura the druid managed to make it inside the instance so we can summon him. We finally had a tank, and the rest of the instance went pretty smoothly. (Mind controlling Twilight Elementalists was fun - they had shaman-Shock spells in their arsenal).
Playing a priest can be quite the rush!
Chris
So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in - Treesh - 05-09-2005
I love it when the group comes out victorious after snarls like that. It's much fun for the priest. :D
Icebird,May 9 2005, 04:06 PM Wrote:To keep track of other party member's pets you have to hover or click on them - they don't show up in the party display.If you don't like to use mods, you can use the V key to help keep track of pets (shows nameplates and if you have show petnameplate enabled in the interface options). Of course, if they get to far away from you the bar for the pet disappears or if there's a lot of critters moving around, the bar moves around and is harder to cast on it. You don't have to actually target the pet, just click your heal spell and then hover over the nameplate and click that way to heal pets. It's better than nothing and usually the bar is easier to hover over than the pet itself is. There's also hitting shift-F# where F# is the member of the group who has the pet in order to target the pet or just hitting the F# twice, but for me that's clunkier than hitting shift F# to get the pet.
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So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in - Icebird - 05-09-2005
I'm hoping that the announced features for the upcoming 1.5 patch will encourage the mod makers to integrate better pet information into the display. I'd love to see the pets status displayed in a small bar below the relevant party member, similar to how your pet/minion currently appears below the player frame.
I'm predominantly concentrating on the party frame when I'm playing my priest, and its distracting to have to hunt around to find out the pet's health.
I'll definitely look into the pet nameplate thing. It would have been very useful yesterday.
Chris
So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in - vor_lord - 05-09-2005
Icebird,May 9 2005, 03:35 PM Wrote:I'm hoping that the announced features for the upcoming 1.5 patch will encourage the mod makers to integrate better pet information into the display. I'd love to see the pets status displayed in a small bar below the relevant party member, similar to how your pet/minion currently appears below the player frame.
I'm predominantly concentrating on the party frame when I'm playing my priest, and its distracting to have to hunt around to find out the pet's health.
I'll definitely look into the pet nameplate thing. It would have been very useful yesterday.
Chris
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I rely completely on the nameplate for healing pets. I've not been able to find a mod that is worth installing for pet health (none of them update properly, although it seems the concept behind CT_Raidassist could be used to do pet health -- maybe it does and the pet owner probably needs it installed, hmmmm).
The biggest annoyance is that in order to see the nameplates, you must be relatively close to the battle. That's ok, but when the hunter or warlock is behind you or near you , pets in passive mode zip back to their owner very quickly when their target dies, and it sure seems like it's always in the midst of me trying to click the little healthbar to pop a renew or something. A voidwalker is less trouble as he is pretty slow.
That said without the nameplates healing multiple pets would be nigh impossible. With a single pet you can keep it targeted the whole time (in combination with a mod), but with two it's the nameplates all the way.
I am looking forward to the 1.5 patch interface improvements a lot. CT_Raidassist is a godsend for healers in a raid group, but is always glitchy (at least for me, I'm new to raiding) and takes some squirreling around for every group (who's reporting for whom etc). 1.5 promises pet and raid group health update events and that should solve both problems.
<peeve>
Now if they'd just put into the default interface pet bars/raid bars we wouldn't have to mess with mods for that at all.
</peeve>
So a priest, another priest and 3 warlocks walk in - Quark - 05-10-2005
vor_lord,May 9 2005, 07:18 PM Wrote:... and takes some squirreling around for every group (who's reporting for whom etc).
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That, at least, is solved with the latest CT_RaidAssist version. It's got some nice extra features, and more importantly, automatically reports for anyone in your group who doesn't have the mod.