My First Heroic: Not So Much

Last night, Talonis was hoping to get another shot at Magister’s Terrace. Things happened (or didn’t, such as the lack of a healer). Instead, the group decided to tackle normal Blood Furnace, since a certain frost mage had a couple old quests cluttering her quest log.

With four level 70s in the group, there really wasn’t a lot of need for a healer, but I volunteered to go along anyway: It had been quite awhile since I’d healed an instance, and I recently rearranged my UI to (I hoped) make it easier for me to do so. Oh…the group: Prot warrior, BM hunter, MM hunter, frost mage, and yours truly, one each squishy.

About 15 minutes in, the tank asked "Oh…do we have a healer?" Yeah…normal BF is that easy for even poorly geared 70s, and we’re better than that. Needless to say, we tore through BF, the mage and MM hunter completed the quests, and then we thought, "What next?" The BM piped up, "Heroics!"

The daily was Auchenai Crypts—Talonis had been in once, long ago, so there was some familiarity with the place, but not on Heroic mode. Neither of the ladies (mage, MM) could remember being in there. And apparently, no one had been in there in Heroic mode. So going in, we knew we were in for some "learning." About halfway to the first boss, our BM hunter had to log, so we brought in another frost mage.

Yes, indeed: We got schooled, over and over. But we DID learn, a lot. We never wiped twice on the same pull, so we learned from each of those. We learned that the only thing worse than having the healer mind-controlled, is to have the Boomkin of Doom MC’d…and targeting the healer. (LOL…I did some of my best healing in that fight, though!) I also learned that my techniques were sound. On the other hand, if a dozen wipes end up costing only 17g in repairs, I might be undergeared. 

After several wipes on Shirrak, the first boss, we finally called it. He has a nasty, nasty debuff, by which casting time is 200 percent of normal; i.e., 12 seconds for a Greater Heal. So I tried to stick to Renews and the frisbee; in retrospect, I should have at least tried Flash Heal, although it’s a spell I try to avoid for mana conservation reasons. We did get Shirrak down to 24 percent, so I think the same group could take him, if I can get a few Flash Heals off.

After we disbanded, I decided I needed to see if there were any gear upgrades for me in the AH. I quickly found and bought [Kamaei's Cerulean Skirt] and paired that with [Golden Spellthread]. I’d have picked up the [Whitemend Set] if it had been available; however, a friend has the pattern for the hood, so I will save up my Mooncloth for that, at least. But we all agreed, we simply need to run a lot more instances, even on normal mode, to improve our gear so we can tackle things such as MrT and Heroics with a reasonable expectation of success.

With the upgrades, my unbuffed +Heal is 1431, but I also noticed I have two green gems in place, and I will upgrade those ASAP. (Actually had one cut this morning, but Falken was up much too early, and sold it on the AH instead of mailing it to me!) As big a concern is my health, but I don’t know I can get more Stam gear at the moment.

What I do need to work on is getting the right level of Greater Heal cast, so I’m not having to chain-cast. I made some progress in that area last night, but I was spoiled by the fact that for the most part, I had way more mana than I needed. Unfortunately, that can lead very quickly to Very Bad Habits. My goal next time in is to better anticipate how much healing will be needed by the time the spell is cast, not what was needed 3 seconds earlier.

But the most important thing, to me, was that we all had fun. No one griped about the wipes, everyone did their parts well (all things considered) and we are ready to get together again and do more dungeon-crawls.