Less Crutch, Still Padded

The Speedy Bubble spec is no more. In its place is a more wholesome, more classic Holy spec, with a nod toward the big absorb power of Speedy Bubble, but lacking the reduced cooldown.

I think my guild relies on its healers more than it ought to. Which might sound odd coming from a healer, but then again perhaps that's exactly who should be feeling this way. I hear about 10 mans running with 2 healers - which we've done, but frankly we tend not to do so. I'm not sure if it's because they don't trust us to keep them up, so they want a backup... or if they're aware that a significant portion of our DPS doesn't bother making a point of getting out of the BAD, and thus needs some healer help to keep the raid machine chugging along.

We've got a lot of healers available on our raid nights. We tend to bring 6 healers, and sometimes have to ask one or two to sit out even with that many already in the raid. We've skimmed by with 5 healers, canceled if we've had fewer. Some of our healers have DPS offspecs, so if we're short on DPS for the night we'll have the healers do that, instead.

Still, it's come to my attention: We're asking DPS to sit a lot, we occasionally have to ask healers to sit, and sometimes our Tanks volunteer to sit (because suddenly we have more than enough, regularly - hooray for offspec becoming main spec during the Tank Shortage Panic of '09!). But we could run with fewer healers, and perhaps kick our DPS in the rear to stop being... well, boneheads.

The mage that runs up to breathe fire on the skeleton trash at the very beginning of the instance: He knows they're going to explode when they die. He knows that AE damage is hitting them, because he's doing quite a bit of it himself. He can SEE their health. He likes to stay in and get exploded upon.

Which, on it's own, isn't a big deal. But there's a mentality that "I can do stupid things that will cause me to take damage I could easily avoid, WOO! I think I shall do this! It'll let me push my pewpew buttons more and spend less time NOT pushing my pewpew buttons! This strategy is pure win!"

I don't like that mentality.

Moving on!

So I've dropped the Speedy Bubble spec. It was a crutch, of course, and we've moved past needing parts of it. We're actually getting a lot better. On 10 man, it's ridiculously simple (at least, it was this week; perhaps next week's combination will fail repeatedly). On 25 man it's been consistently difficult to make a clean kill. People are still running away from the big ooze before running toward it, but fewer people are staying in because they've completely missed the fact that they've got the disease on them. This is good. There are also fewer people dragging their mini ooze back into the group. This is also good.

Why have I changed my spec every so slightly like this?

Valithria.

My first serious experience with Valithria was on 10 man. I was Disc specced. I was tasked with staying outside the portals, and healing the raid, while the other two healers went into the portals to suck up gas and sprinkle a little love on Valithria for 10 seconds before popping back into the portals.

I experienced my own personal Emerald Nightmare.

Perhaps I could have done it, had our members been familiar with the fight, and aware of what to avoid tanking (Zombies, anyone?). If they'd known what kill priorities to follow, what to kite, what to avoid, what to interrupt - even knowing where to go - all of that probably would have helped immensely.

But we didn't. We knew to stay out of the blue-white geysers, get out of the pulsing purple puddles; we knew that raidwide fire damage was bad, and that Suppressors were evil, and that DPS shouldn't kiss Abominations. But that was pretty much it. So we didn't have anyone kiting Zombies, DPS wasn't quite sure where the Suppressors would come out. Liches were annoying.

Me? I was an angry wreck and about to break into tears. Tanks should not be tanking Zombies, in case I hadn't made that clear. Two tanks, tanking Zombies, is horrible. Especially when the rest of the raid is eating frost bolts and fireballs and that massive AE fire thing, the name of which escapes me right now but is the worst offender of the entire encounter.

The healing lead? He was in the portals. He'd never stayed out, even on our one or two first half assed, raid time is ending attempts the week before. So he wasn't sure what was so bad about leaving the Disc Priest outside, alone, with a raid that was unfamiliar with the encounter. He thought it was ok for the two raid healers to pop into the portals constantly.

Well, he wasn't sure, but after several deaths he realized someone besides the Disc Priest had to stay out. So I got to keep the Druid. And we still had problems... mostly because of the Zombies. I'm not a Pally, I can't heal through hits that fast and hard on top of what the Tank's supposed to be taking.

Eventually HE stayed out through a portal to see what was going so horribly wrong, and he found he didn't even have a chance to enter a portal once the damage started rolling in.

So I dropped my Speedy Bubble crutch spec and went with a more normal Holy spec, in the event I was expected to raid and tank heal on Valithria again in the future.

I wound up being the only healer sent into the portals the following week... and we stuck around long enough to get her up to about 90% which, if I recall correctly, it's significantly higher than the Shaman and Druid were able to manage on earlier attempts. I suppose getting in more portal phases MIGHT have helped. But I'm deriving what's probably an unhealthy pleasure and amusement from the fact that the healing lead is now having a tough time healing out there even with the raid being aware of what to avoid, what to pounce on when it spawns, and what sorts of raid damage are incoming when certain waves spawn.

If I hadn't failed at keeping my stacks up at one point, we'd probably have had her. But still, it was great seeing her that high. And the 40k heals were nice to spot if I looked up between portals. (So, now I've got a Valithria crutch spec - YAY!)