Last night, RavenLoft hit Karazhan. Well, we gave it a love tap. It seems the respawn timer on the trash before Attumen was running fast: Every time we got to the Huntsman, about the same time he started ranting, the trash started spawning. We figured the respawns were occurring at around 12 to 15 minutes. Here’s hoping the reset tonight will go more smoothly.
However, since we had a lot of folks new to Karazhan (including, technically, myself—my quick foray on Sunday to heal on Prince notwithstanding), it was a good opportunity for people to learn how to work together. Our off-tank, a prot pally newly specced and somewhat undergeared, was also brand-new to Kara. No problem: I was her healer. 
I was a little nervous about shackling, but the two tanks and I were on Skype (as well as game chat; we lost our Vent server over the weekend when the owner left the guild), so Fult was careful not to pull before I had my shackle target (star) focused. That will go better tonight, when I move the focus macro to a key under my left hand. I must say, though, my shackle macro (thank you, Ego!!) worked like a charm! (And having reread Ego’s article, I now know what to do when my shackle is the raid target, and the other shackle is broken!) (Hint: Shift-click.)
So my shackling was satisfactory, and in a couple cases, perfect, with the shackle hitting just as the ghost horse started to look in the tank’s direction. For the most part, re-shackling was equally good; however, I had the part about "diminishing returns on multiple CC’s" reinforced very effectively a couple times.
Healing was pretty good: I had by far the highest bonus healing of the three healers (the other priest and an enhancement shaman). Although I was too focused on what was happening in the raid to glance at my FSR stat, I never felt I was in danger of going OOM, except on the first (longest) Attumen battle. I waited longer than I should have to call on my shadow fiend (unused cooldowns are useless cooldowns, right?), but still had plenty of mana when I (and everyone else) died. On the second and third attempts, I launched the fiend earlier, and would have had it available a second time in the fight, except…well, never mind.
So I learned I could shackle. I learned I could heal a raid. On a couple pulls, it seemed like I healed everyone in the raid but…me: my first repair bill was almost 16 gold, and I was at 8 percent durability. I need to work on my own self-awareness so I can heal myself better, and thereby keep the tank alive. On the other hand, there were a few times when I was just…dead. Poof! Spirit of Redemption, here I am. (Speaking of SoR, what I wouldn’t give for just one.second.more of those angel wings!!)
Now, here’s a lesson for the rest of you in the raid: Trust your healers.
If you didn’t get a heal when you thought you should, it’s not because the healer has a vendetta against you. When I was healing last night, my eyes were all over the raid. But every other glance was at my primary target, the off-tank. I was also checking my shackle timer, trying to be sure I re-shackled before it broke. While I wasn’t responsible for the rest of the raid, I know I saved the MT, MT healer, and raid healer’s asses at least once each, not to mention keeping DPSers in the fight longer. At best, there are three of us healers, and 5 of you (not counting MT and OT). Do the math.
Lesson number two: In CC we trust.
If you aren’t on CC duty, ignore those other lucky charms. If I’m shackling Star, and star breaks and gets in your face, KEEP BURNING DOWN THE SKULL (or wherever in the kill order you are). I will re-shackle, and if we’re lucky, heal you. Even if I don’t re-shackle and you end up dead, far better you maintain your focus fire on the tank’s target, than change targets (thereby breaking my re-shackle) and we don’t kill either target before the raid wipes. If the star is beating on you and you die, we’ve lost only 1/10 of the raid group. But if you don’t let me keep that mob from killing others, it’s a wipe.
Kara was fun, because it was a learning experience, and I believe every member of our raid gained from it. But it was also painful: We wiped too often on trash. I know that will change; it has to change. It was disappointing that we didn’t get even one boss down (I think many were hoping for three). But I was encouraged by several things: I felt I was very effective, overall. Our MT (who’d prefer to be burning things down with his mage) was very effective. Our OT learned a LOT, and may well become our MT before too long. And a hunter in the guild has become Talonis’s "project." She is eager to learn and receptive, and that may well be the basis of a future post.
Two cent suggestion. If you have a third healer – typical for early raids on Kara – I like that person to have two primary targets: the tank and off tank healers. Healers have a bad habit of NOT noticing their own health. By setting up this way, the OT healer (who tends, as you did, to also be watching the rest of the raid) and the RAID healer are watching each other’s back — while the MT healer can go tunnel vision with absolutely no worry. Eventually the two second healers will have to discuss sharing heals so they don’t waste what the other is doing, but as a first rule that works well:
MT healer focus on MT, general awareness of everyone else. (If everyone else dies but the tank, you did right.)
OT healer focus on OT, second focus on Raid Healer. (If everyone but the OT and the Rd Heal die, you did right.)
Rd Healer primary focus is the other two healers. (If you have to choose, the healers win – but try to get everyone.)
My two cents, of course – there are other equally good plans.
Kirks last blog post..I’m still a priest
Yay!!! I’m so excited for you guys! Congrats on the first official foray into Kara, and bugs happen, but that Attumen trash doesn’t waste anytime with their respawn timers, silly dead people.
Tell your prot pally to send me a /tell. I got a shopping list for her.
Having fun and learning from your attempts is important. The rest will come in time. When you’re new to the place all the trash seems like it’s on the shortest respawn timer ever! This will change.
Ahhh, Kes, your first Kara run sounds like my guilds first run a few weeks back. We no sooner get in there, buff up, and proceed to wipe on the first pull. Most of the ppl I was with have never been in a 10 man before. But we prevailed, got through about half the trash, wiped again, and the silly respawn timer kicked in…But we did finally bring down the Horseman!
Moroes…yeah, thats a whole other issue. We are still gunning for him.
Bunnyfers last blog post..Tweaking my UI
Here’s a little tip for your warrior tanks. If you see a loose shackle mob that refuses to stay put Target it taunt and go back to your primary target. This will give the priest a few seconds to reaply shackles without it running around beating on the poor squishy people, who for some unknown reason decide to dress in something other than full plate.
Stuntyones last blog post..The Banhammer And Collateral Damage.
Congrats and I hope you guys progress even further!
I was an officer in my guild for a long time and Karazhan was our drama llama. People who were prepared and ready to go rock, ran heroics, had pots, flasks, food buffs, etc, were getting very annoyed with people who weren’t. People who hit 70 and thought they deserved a spot on the Kara team. Being a small casual guild, we didn’t have any stat requirements. It was something the raid leader left to the raiders. Being a number cruncher, I would help people out as best I could. For example, having a tankadin myself, I could explain that it was possible to meat uncrittable/uncrushable status before Karazhan. Still we had MT paladins who would go into the Prince fight with crushable-status and Prince Phase 2 would eat him alive. Even w/ our group of heavies, Kara was a two night affair minimum, three nights most often.
Suffice to say we had a big split. The GL decided he didn’t want any more of this and went to a raiding guild. Being the ranking officer, the GL post was handed to me and I was given the decision of whether to close shop or keep going. We had a good core of people left and we decided to give it a shot. The first thing I did was state that if you wanted to raid in our guild, then you need to treat it seriously. We instituted minimum statistics – I used the list from Altosis . We dedicated ourselves to being on time, to moving quickly, and to knowing the boss fights beforehand.
First night the new group went into Karazhan we did Attumen to Prince( including Illhoof, excluding nightbane and netherspite ) in 4 hours flat. Two weeks after that, we did it in just over 3 hours.
Very very few of us are serious raiders. In fact, our serious raiders have 70s in larger guilds, and keep some 70s in our guild because they like the atmosphere. We’re -not- “133t” by any definition of the word. But all it took was some minimum standards and some efficiency in how we raided and the guild took a sharp turn. It makes a -huge- difference to have these standards set, and to be honest, they’re not all that hard to meet. One of the main things the standards introduce is some of the obscure stats. Hit Rating on DPSers is HUGE. Mana Per 5 for Healers is a big deal! Minimum of 490 Def ( 415 for Druids ) for tanks is an absolutely non-negotiable minimum.
Scotts last blog post..On changes, alts, progression, and repression.
Wow…thanks for all the great comments and encouragement! We did get Attumen down last night (I lost the roll on the priest gloves, but that’s okay…the guy who should have won, did), and gave Moroes a scare. I think we can take him down tonight.
I do think we may have an issue with people not working hard enough to be “Kara-ready” which is why I’m very encouraged by the attitude of the hunter I’m taking under my wing.