I had to tell someone this. It happened just a few minutes ago. (Note: I have some healing questions, if you want to skip the dopey story and offer me some advice, skip to the ***).
I raided BC, Naxx and Uld with my Holy Pally and I love healing, but I always wanted to try Tree Heals. I just hit 80 with my Druid four days ago - I know its four days because I have 8 Frost Emblems. I leveled Kitty and switched to Critchicken/Resto at 80, but was afraid to try healing anything until getting some unbad gear. Last night I decided to try healing a regular dungeon, jumped in the LFG, and got Gundrak. It went OK, no one died.
After that I had time for one more so I sucked it up and tried a heroic. I got Culling of Strat and lost one dps, then I died in the gauntlet before the mount boss. Otherwise it went well. I had this morning off so I jumped in the LFG and got heroic DTK. Lost the rogue, and later the shammy, but otherwise uneventful. So far no real Oh Sh't moments, but I want some so I can see how I deal with them.
Then I jump back in and get heroic HoL. The tank immediately drops group and we re-que. After a minute or two the DK asks me (I was lead) if I know how to put us back in the que for a tank . . . I explain that we are in the que already and a few minutes later she says "I wonder why its taking so long to get a tank?" and the Ret replies "Yeah, weird." Again . . . So I explain that the tanks I know say they wait less than five secs for a group, so I have to assume they are few in number, hence the wait. By the way, the other dps was a very well-geared hunter, so I wasn't too worried.
We get a warrior tank and get going and I'm doing OK again, but the DK and Ret are taking a lot of damage. Having people who are not very well geared is good when you are learning to heal on a new class though, and the tank was doing great. After the second boss I get a whisper from the tank. I know you can't whisper in these groups because we're on different servers, and was surprised at first, but then realized he was from my realm, and from one of the better raiding guilds. He says "I'm glad you're healing because these two dps are worthless." I then see the DK and Ret are at 1k.
I have no problem with them being at 1k since we all need to gear up, and the tank and hunter were doing great. But I nearly fell out of my chair when I saw him complimenting my healing. He has no idea who I am, my Druid is in my alt guild. It was a pleasant surprise.
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So, let me take advantage here for a minute, I've been keeping Rejuv on the tank and rolling LBs, refreshing just before it drops, and using Regrowth for larger heals. I use swiftmend when I need a bigger heal and WG when I need to heal more than two people, and so far that's all I've been comfortable with - meaning in the heat of the moment I'm not going to anything else. I want to start now on working in nourish. I've read that rolling LBs was the way to go in BC raids but no longer, but in these 5-mans it seems to work for me. Am I doing it right?
Also, I focus the tank and keep my grid next to his focus frame, so I can keep track of things, but that's probably not going to work in raids because of the size my grid will grow to. Any suggestions? I use Grid + Clique for healing with my Pally and I dl'd the Druid HoT addon for Grid but it seems like it may need to be set up somehow, and I haven't been able to figure it out yet, so right now Grid isn't tracking HoTs.
Thanks in advance for any advice. Oh, here's my
armory link.
EDIT: to add armory link. Edited, Jan 4th 2010 2:47pm by cynyck