MC raid signup for Thurs, Oct 13

[Treesh]

Thoughts and observations on my "virgin run" raiding MC (these aren't complaints!  These are just things I learned and maybe some suggestions):

1) Healing styles best for 5-man groups are pointless in raid situations.

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2) In situations where a single main tank is on a boss, our healing setup could probably use some improvements.&nbsp; ***This is not a complaint or a dig on anyone, just a suggestion for a possible better way to do things***
&nbsp; The Druid class is actually the superior class for maintaining health on a main tank.&nbsp; Their heals are better for one-on-one healing.&nbsp; What makes Priests shine is their "oh crap" abilities to save wipes on large numbers of people, due to PW:S and Prayer of Healing.&nbsp; A fully Restoration-spec'ed Druid is a better choice for these fights.

I'm thinking Magmadar here.&nbsp; The Big Doggie casts a group fear every thirty seconds and I enjoyed being the Fear Ward bot for Anadrol.&nbsp; But then I noticed two things:

&nbsp; &nbsp; a) Everyone was getting pretty spread out, and it made healing difficult.&nbsp; I'd see that some people were getting hurt pretty bad but I'd have no idea where they were in the thick of things.

&nbsp; &nbsp; B) Most players stayed in front of Magmadar.&nbsp; I pointed out in Healerchat that players will take more damage staying in front of Magmadar instead of behind or to the sides of him.&nbsp; This puts more strain on the healers to keep squishies and leatherwearers alive.&nbsp; During the fight, I noticed this pretty quickly and moved my butt to the safer positions.&nbsp; I think I was the only healer back there for the various other players who had taken position in the back.

I think the most efficient setup for the Mag fight is to have two or three Druids out front healing the main tank, with Priests in position on the sides and back where everyone else would congregate.&nbsp; I also recognize that this was my first ever encounter with him and I'm a n00b, so feel free to tell me why this is a bad idea.&nbsp; But at least consider it.

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5) You guys in healerchat are a riot.&nbsp; Good thing the other raid members don't hear what we say about them!&nbsp; *snicker*

*Cleoboltra whistles innocently*

6) I need better gear.&nbsp; Darian died against Shazz when the boss was at like 5% health (dammit!) because I had to blow 2,500 mana keeping a Paladin alive who wasn't aware they were inside Shazz's AoE range and getting rocked, so I lost my main tank.&nbsp; With better gear I would have had mana left after blowing my Inner Focus, mana potion, and a Demonic Rune.&nbsp; Did everything I could to keep my tank vertical and it just wasn't enough.

7) Speaking of that, do you other healers tend to go through a lot of mana potions or is it just my gear?&nbsp; On the Baron Geddon fight I blew through three mana potions - yes, the fight was that long - scaring myself silly just getting enough mana to keep Darian afloat until the very end when those gargantuation AoE fire blasts started leveling everyone.

-Bolty

Edit: fixed my bad math and typos.
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I'll somewhat organize my thoughts here and respond using the numbered points you set up Bolty.

1. I still use renew in the 40 man raids. I'll throw it around on the non-tanks especially. I use it so I don't screw up other healers' flash or *cough* greater heals (and their equivalents for druid/pallies), but still feel like I'm actually helping in some small way. Whether or not that's most mana efficient, meh. I get bored so I throw out renews. Shoot me. :P

2. I've noticed when I'm fear ward botting Anadrol, that I'm the only one really in range of the folks behind Mags so I hit them as best I can, but most of the time the squishier folks know they're on their own basically because of how spread out things get. Like Onyxia, everyone gets spread out into evens and odds and it's damned hard to actually find anyone (even with having everyone's name shut off so I only see the person I've selected) when it's time to fear ward. So it's basically just worry about the tanks and healers who are actually next to me. I don't waste my time running all over trying to get a specific one (besides the main tank) because it's just not possible in the really big areas.

5. It was actually pretty quiet and tame in healerchat. :) You should see when we get loopy and/or bored. ;)

6. Better gear definitely makes a difference in there. So will two levels. ;) But better gear will make more of a difference.

7. I rarely ever drink mana pots. I blew through three in a pubbie LBRS run early on Thursday, but I didn't drink a single pot in MC last night. If I start getting low, I bandage the squishies who won't be still taking damage and I use the crystal restores on people who are still taking damage to help eke out every bit of healing I can. I don't have the fancy discipline talent tricks to rely on (except for 4 points in Mental Agility), but I am better geared than Cleoboltra. I have a decent mixture of stamina, intellect, spirit and regen x mana over 5 seconds gear and having discipline priests buff me with divine spirit helps too. :) If there are no divine spirit priests around, I use my crystal force to help keep my mana pool happy. Also, when it's not absolutely crucial for me to be healing and I'm low on mana (or even if I just want to top off), if there's a judgement of wisdom on the critter I wand away. That plus the wisdom buff and my normal regen keeps me pretty happy mana wise. Maybe I'm just not pulling my weight enough with healing (last night I was a bit more sluggish than I would have liked, although there were more times when I was slideshowing than I would have liked too), but it's rare when I'm run completely out of mana if I'm not the priest in the group with the main tank. When I'm the main tank healer, I run low/out much more frequently. :)

Cirya died too often last night, even taking into account that we told her to hit a feral form so she was up there in the fray. It seemed like when I really needed my bars to update quickly, that's when they updated the slowest. There were a couple of times where Cirya went from fully healthy to dead in record time on my screen, but I doubt it happened that quickly for Cirya. If we can keep Taha alive through hellfires while having serrated bites on, Cirya should have been able to be kept alive too better than what I did.

Edit: Forgot to mention I've also got a bit of +healing gear on too thanks to higher level equipment. The intell helps to get crit heals (along with having holy specialization) so I don't like to sacrifice that and really, I don't like to sacrifice anything so that's why I've got a fairly balanced gear set. Although, I am still a bit lower than I'd like on stamina, but it's getting there. :)