Hard modes are hard

So our first night of attempting hard mode ICC kills didn’t work out so well. On the plus side, everything else went fairly smooth, and I certainly feel better about my healing. I have realized however that my hatred for Priests hasn’t diminished at all. We didn’t spend a lot of time with the hard modes, as we wanted to ensure we got a repeat LK kill this week.

If any other Healadin is reading this blog – please let me know if you can confirm that Beacon works on Dreamwalker. It looked like I was getting BoL heals on her while healing the raid. If this is so I’m going to go crawl in a corner and wait for our incoming nerf. 74k+ HL crits with 27 stacks was ridiculous.

Initial thoughts on hard modes

Our biggest challenge wasn’t that the bosses were hard (they are), or that we weren’t prepared (we weren’t). Instead it was that our new tank and ranged DPS haven’t killed Arthas yet (at least on those toons). Oops. This led to the discovery that the toggle between normal and heroic is 10 minutes, and they can’t run into the instance after a wipe.

Marrowgar

I’m going to say that my first shot at trying this guy as a healer should not have been on heroic. I lost my SA and got myself out on an island and died to a bone spike during his Bone Storm. I didn’t see any other huge mechanic change though, so I’m fairly confident we can push past him next week. We’ve also confirmed (not that there was any doubt) that Cowntzero’s (warrior tank) snap DPS isn’t as high as mine was. Way to live with 20HP Womb!

Deathwhisper

Didn’t try this on heroic. From what I read though it seems to be 25m abilities on 10m. CCing the Boomkin will be interesting.

Gunship

Aww yeah. I honestly didn’t even realize it was on heroic. Beacon is incredibly overpowered on this fight, as I could stand on the edge and heal both tanks. I’m embarrassed to say this is the only heroic we managed to do. This will change next week though.

Saurfang

IT BURNS, OH GOD IT BURNS. We normally kill Saurfang before he can get off a single Mark. Our best attempt last night was 87% with 3 Marks out. Stupid blood pets.

Why I hate Priests

Two words – Lazer Beams. One of the things I like about the Paladin is that my toolbox is very straight-forward. Big heal, little heal, instant heal. I have a few utility ‘hands’ that I can toss around, but for the most part the choices in any given situation are one of those three staple spells.

Priests have what – eight? Nine? I honestly don’t know if I could handle it, though it would be pretty awesome to have that kind of utility at my disposal. Different choices for burst heals, a small HoT, shields, proactive healing, smart heals, and Lazer Beams. Oh how I hate those beams.

It did feel like we had good synergy though, as Mongrr and I quickly slipped back into our 3.1 healing setup. Like always, it’s fairly difficult to ignore someone who has just taken damage, but we do a fairly decent job of trusting each other to cover our assignments.

Conclusion

I am fairly certain next week will see us getting one or two additional hard mode kills. As long as we get a repeat Arthas downing, I don’t see any reason why we won’t be dedicating at least one night a week to learning the tougher fights. Like anything else, I think it’s just a matter of time before things click and we’re pocketing some sweet kill shots.

Now to go learn MouseOver macros….