For Posterity

Because it's a little hard to see, the first screenshot is of one of my crit Healing Waves, which landed on a warlock for 9895. Almost 10,000 health in one shot.

The second screenshot is of our last raid where we spent 4 hours wiping 19 times on the Illidari Council. It's total raid healing for the entire night. What you're seeing is that I did 17% of the total raid's healing and that my nearest competition is a full 1.5 million behind me in healing.

The sad part? I thought I was doing a horrible job last night. As a caveat to those numbers, I did have a shadow priest in my group, so mana was not a huge issue. No matter how well I performed, there are plenty of things to work on. Most notably, I have a real issue remembering to blow Bloodlust on my own. I have to learn to do that without being told. Additionally, I still need to work on my positioning. I could be doing a better job of placing myself so that more people are in range of my heals.

I did practice being more reactive in my healing like the new resto shaman, and I think the results paid off. My overheal is surprisingly low on heals that I primarily cast at full rank, like lesser healing wave and healing wave. That shows that I was healing intelligently and reacting quickly. Not quickly enough for my own tastes, but the numbers show that I was doing better than I thought.

On a related note, Nature's Guardian is definitely worth the five talent points and I won't be respeccing from my standard raiding build any time soon. This WWS parse proves its effectiveness, I think.

Delicious Shaman Tears

While reading about the Illidan encounter, I discovered that during the most healing intensive phase, Phase 2, shaman totems are bugged and cannot be used. My response:

WTF BLIZZARD

I QQed about it on the Illidan strategy thread on our guild forum. One of my friends posted a reply to me saying, "Shaman tears are delicious." Which makes me think that Blizzard rather enjoys the taste too. Other classes don't have to remove all their buffs.

This makes me so upset that I can't even write about it. It will be an incoherent rant about anything and everything that Blizzard has screwed up about my class and I'd rather not subject you to that. Suffice to say that I'm pretty angry right now.

To-Do Lists

When I left my old guild and joined the one I'm in now, I was determined to improve Salanthe and prove myself to the new guild. I spent hours researching and ended up with a very long list of goals, including maxing out professions and weapons skills, hitting exalted with various factions, farming primals, and other more mundane things.

Several months later, I've checked off almost everything on that list and am reaping the benefits. Having maxed out cooking and fishing is completely worth the hours I spent power-leveling them from zero to 375. I have both a netherwing drake and a nether ray to choose from. I have every single talbuk (they all look so pretty!). I can buy flasks from the vendor in my bank and I can get my gear repaired just about anywhere without worrying about the extra cost.

Now that I'm redoing Salanthe's professions, I'm secure in knowing that I don't have any reputation grinds to do. Once I max out leatherworking, I can fly to each vendor and pick up all the patterns I could ever desire. It's very freeing.

My advice to folks leveling up a character for the first time: Take your time and do it right. One particularly well-cared for main character can support all your alts with ease. Yes, you may have to do reputation grinds on alts, but you can neglect secondary professions like cooking and fishing. It saves a lot of time and effort in the long run.

My current list for Salanthe (and Sal-related goals for alts):
Do dailies to have at least 2,000 gold on-hand
Max-out herbalism on Miothe
Max-out skinning on Miothe
Get Miothe her flight form (level 64 to 68)
Train leatherworking on Sal and power-level it to 375
Exalted with Thrallmar on Sal
Revered with the Consortium on Sal
Splurge on twinks!

Blogroll Updated

I spent some time this morning browsing for more shaman and healing-related blogs. I actually had some success this time, so please browse my blogroll for some well-written blogs. Not all are shaman or healing-related.

Small Milestone

I bought a new chest piece for Salanthe tonight, the Wave of Life Chestguard. Socket it with an epic 22 bonus healing gem and it is an upgrade over the Golden Links of Restoration, which I had previously.

The reason I'm posting about this minor upgrade is that the chest piece was the very last thing I could upgrade on Salanthe until Illidan falls, with the exception of her bracers (which can be replaced by Living Earth Bindings or Howling Wind Bracers from Hyjal) and her shield, which could be replaced by anything.

It's kind of an odd place to be at, honestly. There is literally nothing I can do to upgrade Salanthe's gear now. It all relies on boss drops. I used to dream about having the best gear in-game back when I first started raiding, but I figured I would never see it. I'm still not sure I'll see Salanthe in full Sunwell Plateau gear before the expansion, but I do think I'll see her in full Tier 6 (minus the new SWP stuff). To think that little shaman running around in role-playing gear would be what she is now... Not at all what I expected, but everything I dreamed. It's a fun feeling.

(Shaman Salanthe Oatwind in full role-playing gear.)

Resto Talent Builds

I am considering changing my standard raiding spec. Right now, I use 8/0/53, which is a very standard raid build. After looking over some WWS parses though, I'm starting to wonder if the 5 points in Nature's Guardian are really worth it. It procs about once an hour while I'm raiding and it has never saved my life. Hence I am debating the following 8/0/53 build.

Basically, I'm taking those 5 points in Nature's Guardian and putting them in Focused Mind and Improved Reincarnation. I think I will give it a try the next time I respec. It could be that I actually miss Nature's Guardian, or I don't notice a difference with Focused Mind. Only testing will answer that question.

Professions

Salanthe was originally a tailor and an herbalist. Tailoring so she could make bags for her guild and herbalism for money. When her guild, The Earthwalkers, split apart, I decided to pursue raiding and reevaluated her professions. Ultimately I decided to drop tailoring and pick up alchemy instead.

This turned out to be a very wise decision, as one of the best healing trinkets in-game is for alchemists only, the Redeemer's Alchemist Stone. At first, I picked transmutation mastery because that was the one mastery not taken by her new guild's (Epoch Veil) resident alchemists. Recently, I decided to switch her mastery from transmutation to elixirs, primarily because transmutation was doing nothing for me.

Well today I decided to change Salanthe quite drastically. For as long as she's been raiding, she's been alchemy and herbalism. Today I decided that she would be better served with alchemy and leatherworking. I dropped Miothe's 309 leatherworking and picked up herbalism, so my little druid will now be Salanthe's farmer. Once Mio's herbalism is maxed out, I'm going to drop it on Sal and pick up leatherworking. This will give me time to farm leather on Mio as I run through low level zones picking flowers, as well as earn money doing dailies on Salanthe. I have no doubt that leatherworking will be very expensive to power-level.

I hope these choices turn out well!

On another note, according to WoW WebStats, I out-healed my nearest competition by over 1,000,000 last night. O.o