An epiphany of sorts

One of our guild officers had an amusing epiphany yesterday -- but I'll get to that in a second.

Last night was one of our regular Karazhan nights, and in spite of being a little off our game at times, we still managed to put on a decent performance. We carved through Curator, Shade of Aran, Netherspite and the Chess event in short enough time that our GM insisted that we had time for a shot or two at Illhoof. (Cue collective groan.) The problem with Illhoof is that it's a tough enough fight if you have proper group balance, and we were down a healer. If you get a little lucky you can do the fight with two healers, but ideally you should have three; one to concentrate on the MT, and two to spam-heal whoever gets chained (in between keeping up the warlock and the rest of the raid). We tried twice, and wiped twice with only two healers.

Rewind.

All dialogue heavily paraphrased.

Plonq is on the wind rider, flying to Swamp of Sorrows on his way to the instance. The talk in Vent turns to which bosses we will and won't be doing tonight. Somebody raises the question about whether we will be taking on Illhoof.

Officer: "No, we won't be doing Illhoof tonight. We're down a healer."
Me: "I could fly back and re-spec holy just for that fight if you like. Then run a couple of quick heroics to upgrade my gear a bit before we pull..."
Officer: "You spec holy? That would be a sight to behold. No, I think we'll be skipping Illhoof.

Fast-forward to Netherspite, as I snap up a healing neck that nobody else wants.

Me: I could use that for my healing set if we're just going to shard it. I always pack two sets of gear with me. That is why I am constantly out of bag space.

Jump ahead to Illhoof where we are running back after our second wipe. More paraphrasing to follow - and our officer has an epiphany. I like to think that the whole "Lisa needs braces -- dental plan!" thing was playing itself out in his head at the time.

There's just no way we can do this fight with just a paladin and a shaman for healing. We need a third healer. One of us has to concentrate on the MT, but we need two healers spamming heals on whoever is in the chains or they'll die too.

[We need a third healer. -- I could use that for my healing set. I always pack two sets of gear with me.]

We've got tons of DPS - way more than we need for this fight. We're just short on healing. We've got a druid, but we need him for our off-tank.

[We need a third healer. -- I could use that for my healing set. I always pack two sets of gear with me.]
...

...

[We need a third healer. -- I could use that for my healing set. I always pack two sets of gear with me.]

...

(Slowly) Wait a minute... you can heal. You're a priest - you have a heal button. Did you say that you'd brought your healing gear with you...?

Once they had me switch to healing, we downed him with ridiculous ease. I was the only one who died in the fight - twice, actually (battle rez ftw.). By the time I died in the chains again we had him down to 12% and the fight was effectively over. The officer admitted that he'd become so used to me functioning as a pure DPS class that he'd come to think of me as another warlock, and he'd forgotten that I am also a fairly effective healer. After tonight they're going to start treating me like a hybrid - which is fine with me. I don't mind getting tapped to heal in fights like this because for me, taking down a boss is more important than trying to top the healing meters, and getting the call to heal now and then helps me to keep that those skills sharpened.

Sometimes it's nice being the only person from your class along on a raid. For the second run in a row I made out like a bandit and got three upgrades (two for healing, one for DPS). I've been practising the phrase, "Well, if nobody else wants it..."

Not much of a presence here recently

I have not been around here much in the past couple of weeks, either reading or posting. The problem is that traditionally I have done most of my LJ reading/writing at work, but now that I've been moved out onto the floor, I don't have the privacy that I enjoyed in my little office. I am either going to have to bite the bullet and force myself to do this from home, or adapt to the new paradigm.

Since I am a stubborn old sod I am going to do the latter.

There has been surprisingly little to report on in my life lately. We picked strawberries last weekend and atara turned most of them into yummy strawberry jam.

I took Tuesday off work and we caught the matinee of Ratatouille. The story was a bit predictable, but they managed to avoid some of the annoying clichés that one often sees in a movie like this. I give the movie two thumbs up (four if I had prehensile toes, but then I'd just be showing off).

We have a potential adopter for our foster cat. We're going to crate her up and taker her down to the shelter on Monday for a meet & greet with her prospective owner. Leia gets very stressed out at the shelter, and does not show well there as a rule. atara has booked a private room, and we're going to get there early to let her settle in a bit before this girl shows up for a look.

Don't blow it kid - we like you and all, but we want our change room back.

I am going to miss her when she finally gets adopted. She's a very nice cat, but she picks fights with Jaws or Belladonna.

Good riddance.

Today was not a good day to be Black in Chicago.