Daxie heals

Last night, after doing the daily on Dwarfvader, I decided to work on Daxie's healing gear. So, I looked over what she had and the stats on her shadow gear, made some choices as to what was better or good enough, sold some gear that didn't quite measure up, and queued up in the LFG as a healer.

A side note here: I could have just collected badges as shadow, but I really wanted to heal and I wanted to see what the queue times were for healers.

So, I didn't get any of the ICC 5 mans, thankfully. In fact, I got the easier Heroics - Nexus, UK, Drak'tharon, VH, and OCC. None of the instances were terribly taxing, although the PuGs did make some of them interesting.

On one VH, after seeing the >5K gear score of the tank, I started DPSing from the first pull and was fourth place...as the healer! I called it out over /party. I kept that spot until two pulls after the first boss! I mean, it's one thing to do less damage than the tank, but to do less damage than the healer?? That's just plain lazy! I should have screen shotted it and sent it to Greedy Goblin.

Then on a UK, the bear tank did the typical chain pull stuff, which I'm ok with, but he decided to pull the four pack and the first boss at the same time after chain pulling his way there. Oh, and he only had 42K health (as a bear, buffed, remember), so it wasn't like he was hugely overgeared. We somehow survived despite his inability to hold aggro, pick up adds, or tank in general. I credit 1337 healing...

His excuse was "I felt like a challenge, rawr." My response was, "Don't trust your feelings." He settled down after that, and the run went smoothly.

Teurion and I were talking this morning about the general quality of the LFG groups, and it seems to be spiraling downwards. DPS that can't keep up with the tank, tanks that can't tank, and healers that run OOM every pull.

Some of the issues are situational, ie the 5500 gear score pally tank dragging some 3300 gs dps through an AoE intensive instance. Yeah, those DPSers are going to be lagging behind Mr. Consecration.

But, when Teurion's PuG healer goes OOM after nearly every pull, something is definitely wrong. For one, Teurion is a very good tank that makes sure he has aggro on everthing and, with his gear, he can go an entire Heroic boss fight without heals. I mean, healing him in a Heroic is downright boring! I'm not sure what that healer was spending his mana on...

So, as the raiders get their Triumph badges, several bloggers predicted that the LFG groups will not be as successful as it is currently, and I am seeing just that. Already, Dwarfvader has almost badged himself out as far as Triumph badges are concerned, so I just do the daily on him. Once Daxie has her healing gear, I guess I'll either move on to Vanco or start that druid I mentioned a post or two ago.